It’s a typical room in Buddig Hall, with clothes and shoes haphazardly strewn about the barely-visible floor. But what differentiates this room from others is the clear pathway that divides the room and, seemingly, the people who live inside it.

A shirt from one girl’s dirty clothes pile lies in the middle. A freshman who lives here gently nudges it to its owner’s side, reinforcing this invisible boundary.

“I’m just going to kick your stuff over …” she says to herself, as if speaking to her roommate.

While only a few feet separate them, the freshman, who wishes to remain anonymous, feels miles apart from her roommate.

The girls knew each other prior to starting at Loyola and decided to be roommates. This decision would prove to be a bad one, according to the freshman.

“We never tell each other where we’re going or what’s going on in our lives,” she said.

This awkward tension is a result of her roommate’s continued unwillingness to adapt to her lifestyle habits.

“She won’t compromise,” she said. “If I’m trying to study, she’ll put on the TV or turn up the music really loud.”

The culminating tension eventually made this living situation unbearable, ultimately convincing the two to take advantage of room consolidation period and part ways.

“There will be times when I’ll feel uncomfortable in my own room,” she said. “We don’t even want to be in the same room with each other anymore.”

This separation, according to the freshman, is crucial in preventing this living situation from escalating from bad to terrible.

“My sister had a bad roommate her freshman year … her roommate cut her hair in the middle of the night,” she said.

“That’s one of my fears.”

Incoming freshmen in previous school years were faced with limited options in selecting roommates – they could either be assigned one based on the few questions asked on the residence hall contract, or live with a friend or acquaintance. But the latter option doesn’t always work out.

“Some people will have known each other for their whole lives but realize that they make better friends than roommates,” said Michelle Andrews, associate director for Residential Services.

With seemingly no options left for those who are wary of being matched with a stranger, Loyola Residential Life implemented new technology to help facilitate finding a roommate.

This year’s freshman class is the first to use Converge, a roommate selection database that allows freshmen to find other incoming students with similar lifestyle habits and interests.

“We wanted to give students more say-so in their housing and living arrangements,” said Cephas Archie, assistant director for Residential Education and Judicial Affairs, on Residential Life’s choice to use the software in housing selection.

On Converge, students fill out an extensive personality profile, asking questions about everything from “smoking or non-smoking” preference to “lifestyle, socialization and academic traits,” according to the database’s homepage. Students are also asked about their interest in music, hobbies and extracurricular activities.

The questions, according to Andrews, are “a lot deeper than those on the (housing) contract,” which only asks about neatness, room environment, smoking preference and musical taste.

After completing the survey, the software generates a list of compatible students, in order of their compatibility. From there, students can “choose, or not choose, to contact those people,” said Andrews.

The software can also be used by transfer students, graduate and law students and for students who want to change or consolidate their rooms.

“This is helpful for returning students who don’t feel compatible with their roommates,” said Archie. “They can actually get to know (other people looking to change or consolidate) and not just see them as a vacant space.”

“My mom said she wishes they had something like this for me to find guys … because I found the perfect match,” says chemistry freshman Michelle Chatelain, one student who can attest to Converge’s ability to match up compatible roommates.

“I think out of everyone on the floor, we probably get along the best,” she said of her and her roommate.

Converge’s success, according to Chatelain, can be attributed to its emphasis on lifestyle habits rather than interests.

“The survey asks more lifestyle questions, and they kind of downplay (interests),” she said. “(Similar lifestyle habits) are more important than what TV shows you watch.”

“Plus, if you have all the same interests, you might spend all your time together, so it’s inevitable that you’ll fight.”

Music Industry Studies freshman Blake Durham also met his roommate on Converge, but claims that his roommate wasn’t on the top of his compatibility list.

“He wasn’t the first result. I mostly messaged him because we had similar interest in music,” he said.

“We didn’t even talk much through Converge, but we get along great. It worked out because both of us are pretty easy-going.”

While Converge wasn’t the main factor in him and his roommate’s peaceful cohabitation, Durham is still glad he used the software.

“I think it helped out,” he said. “I prefer to use Converge to just randomly rooming with someone.”

Chatelain said she benefited from using Converge, which has already saved her the hassle of finding a roommate for next semester.

“I’m really glad they had that,” she said.

“We’re going to room together next year, too.”

Since it is a new addition to the housing selection process, Converge has still yet to completely catch on with students.

“We just started using it in the summer, so not everyone’s used it yet,” said Andrews. “Plus, it’s by choice.”

But some students who chose not to use the software still managed to end up in harmonious living situations.

“It seemed kind of weird,” said music education freshman Ainsley Matich on her choice not to use Converge.

“(It was) kind of like a dating service,” chimed in her roommate, music industry studies freshman Mary Petro.

The two girls finish each other’s sentences and are “best friends” at Loyola, according to Matich, but were assigned based on the Residence Hall Contract. Why they were assigned as roommates remains a mystery to them.

“We’re completely opposite,” said Petro. “I brought, like, 28 pairs of shoes (to school) and she brought three.”

Opposites attract in this case, but not everyone is as lucky.

“Some people are opposites and it doesn’t work out,” said Matich.

With roommate compatibility seemingly a matter of luck in some cases, is software like Converge even necessary? Maybe not always, but according to Archie, it’s certainly beneficial.

“It’s a truly new software that we want to take advantage of for the benefit of our students. It’s an addition to offer further opportunity,” he said.

“We’re going to continue using it for the next incoming class.”

Lauren Laborde can be reached at [email protected].