By Glenn Yoder
Freshmen Esther Assaad and Nickie Cincotta have what Assaad describes as a “stellar” relationship. The room they share in Speare Hall is tidy, they have the same friends and the few conflicts they do have, they talk through. However, not all roommate matches are so ideal, and sometimes an outside source is needed to alleviate the tensions.
Wendy Olson, the Assistant Director of the Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution (OSCCR), along with trained student and staff mediators, offer a mediation group to students whose living situations aren’t top-notch.
“I think it’s important for students to know that [the sessions are confidential], because when we talk about conflict, sometimes we’re talking about things that they’re not comfortable talking with staff about, they may not be comfortable talking with their families about and obviously they’re not comfortable talking about it with the person they’re in conflict with,” Olson said. “So what we try to do is provide a very safe and comfortable atmosphere for them to resolve this conflict.”
The voluntary mediation sessions are free of charge and apply to any student-to-student conflict, although Olson said roommate issues are the most prevalent. The staff is currently in their second full year resolving problems, but Olson said they have yet to gain the students’ confidence.
“The tough thing, and all the research that’s out there on mediation programs will tell you this, is that it takes a while to build up trust on campus,” she said. “We can tell students all we want that it’s a safe and confidential place to come and resolve their conflicts, but they have to hear it from their peers saying, ‘I resolved my conflict through the mediation program and it worked’ … I think [the mediators and I] all have to be a little patient right now in that people don’t come knocking down our doors looking to resolve their conflicts.”
Cincotta was a mediator of a similar program in high school that dealt with physical violence, and she said it was “highly effective.”
“If [we] did have major conflicts, I would definitely use this program,” said Cincotta, a nursing major. “I think if it was a third party looking at the situation, not Esther or I, they could see something that we didn’t realize before because we would both be frustrated.”
Olson said last year the group performed “about two or three dozen” mediations, and this year their statistics are nearly even. The mediators have been visiting Resident Assistants to let them know about the program and how they can help ease end of the year crisis.
“I think an RA has a great deal of responsibility to resolve these types of conflicts,” said Keith Dunn, a sophomore pharmacy major and an RA in Speare Hall. “I think the best way for us to deal with it is to hear one side of the story and sit down with each individual student separately, then if it can’t be resolved, to set up a meeting with the mediators. By involving an RA, residents might feel more comfortable about taking action.”
The RA meetings have been taking place throughout March to raise awareness of the program, especially at this point in the semester.
“We tell the RAs, ‘We’re closing in on the end of a semester, conflicts are running high, we know that this is a time when a lot of students feel like there’s no way out or the conflict has grown out of their control, and this is where we start seeing fights, verbal abuse, vandalism, destruction of property,'” she said. “What we really try to do is just sit them down and get them to a place where they feel they can come to some agreement.”
Occasionally, roommate situations don’t work out and the agreement becomes that one person should leave, Olson said.
“Sometimes the agreement is, ‘We agree to disagree,'” she said. “The point of the mediation is to get these two parties or multiple parties to come to some agreement on whatever the conflict is.
“In mediation, we work toward the win-win situation — how can both parties leave feeling like they’ve been heard. So sometimes the agreement has been, ‘We agree that we shouldn’t live together anymore’ … We never said we’d patch up the relationship, what we said is we’re going to resolve this conflict so that when Bob is living over here and John is living over here, they can say ‘Hello’ or ‘Hi’ when they see each other on campus.”
While all roommate situations aren’t perfect, help is available, Olson said. She can be contacted at (617) 373-4390 or in the OSCCR office, 202 Ell Hall.
