From best friends to enemies, two roommates have had enough of each other.

Ashley and Lindsey were best friends until they lived with each other this semester.

“We have different lifestyles,” said Lindsey, a sophomore.

At Eastern, students are given a roommate survey with their housing contracts that is supposed to match some personality traits and lifestyles.

Less than half of Eastern’s residents request a specific roommate.

Sixty percent of the students living in on-campus housing are given roommates based on surveys given with the housing contracts.

The common questions on the survey focus on smoking, sleeping, cleaning and study habits.

“Some of those things are common sense,” said Mark Hudson, director of University Housing and Dinning. “If you are allergic to smoke, you can’t live with someone who smokes.”

These questions were also included in the roommate surveys given by Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.

Lindsay Partlow, a receptionist for the office of housing and dining at Eastern and one of the people who matches roommates, said they based their questions on ones people commonly asked.

By living together, Ashley and Lindsey found out new things about each other and found that they are not compatible roommates.

Ashley, a sophomore, said she believes they developed their hatred for each other because she believes Lindsey’s personality has changed since they started living together.

Ashley said Lindsey spends all of her time with her boyfriend, putting him first and has stopped spending time with her friends.

“She spends every waking moment of her life with her boyfriend, putting her friends behind him,” Ashley said.

Lindsey spends so much time with her boyfriend that he is also in the room for long periods of time, Ashley said.

Ashley said Lindsey’s boyfriend has been sleeping in the room on many occasions.

Lindsey said she felt Ashley would just get mad because she would not always spend time with her and that Ashley felt neglected.

“She would get annoyed when he was in the room so it made me almost move out,” Lindsey said.

A problem both roommates had with each other was an issue of mutual respect.

Lindsey said Ashley does not respect her when it came to having friends in the room.

She said she has asked Ashley to stop having some of her friends in their room because she did not trust them.

“Although it is up to her who she is friends with, I don’t like certain people in my room around my stuff,” Lindsey said. “The people she hangs out with are shady and I feel they will steal something while she’s not looking. People are not to be trusted in my room with my stuff.”

Lindsey said one time Ashley told her she was going to be bringing over two of her guy friends who had been in trouble before.

Lindsey said she specifically asked Ashley to keep them out of their room, but Ashley disrespected her wishes.

Ashley said she feels that Lindsey has been disrespectful to her by always bringing her boyfriend into the room.

Both roommates complained about the messiness in the room, and each blames the other.

Ashley said, “She seems to always miss her mouth when she eats and drops food everywhere.”

But Lindsey said she has found Ashley’s dirty clothes under her bed, in the middle of the floor and on her dresser.

She also said she feels awkward having friends in the room and hates when she has to explain the mess.

“I like things to be clean and organized I feel as if I am her maid,” Lindsey said.

An issue for Lindsey is that she said she feels she cannot study in the room.

Trust issues have also come from their roommate conflicts.

“During our fight we did not trust each other and I’ve even started taken my keys to the shower in fear she was going to lock me out of the room,” Lindsey said.

Lindsey said she cannot study in the room because Ashley will come in and out with friends that she has just met.

The dislike between the two roommates has grown since rooming together.

“She is aware that I don’t like her, and, in return, does not like me,” Ashley said.

Lindsey said she thought things would turn out differently.

“I thought rooming with my best friend was going to make this the best year ever. Little did I know I am miserable and I lost my best friend,” Lindsey said.

Hudson said that while these questions are meant to match people on some personality traits, they cannot match everything perfectly.

Hudson said topics such as music tastes and moral issues are not asked in the surveys because it would be impossible to match roommates.

“We’re not like eHarmony.com where we are trying to find your soul mate,” Hudson said.

Partlow said the more questions that are asked the harder it is to match roommates.

Craig Eckert, the professor and chair of sociology/anthropology, said the traits that the roommate survey includes are basic things that are important to matching anyone’s personality. The survey contains questions that are important when matching roommates with one another, Eckert said. Though he also said opposite can attract too.

“It doesn’t seem logical to match someone who goes to sleep early with someone who goes to bed late,” Eckert said.

Eckert said one of the benefits of having a different roommate that is different is the learning that goes along with it.

He said by dealing with roommates that are different, students learn how to deal with conflict in the workplace. Those that do get along get the benefit of learning from different areas, such as music, religion or hobbies.

Hudson said that while they encourage roommates to talk and try to work things out, if things are beyond a point of fixing things they can request a room switch.

When roommates have a problem that they cannot solve, they can go through the process to get their rooms switched.

Ashley said she does not want to switch rooms because she has many friends on the floor and does not want to move away from them.

Lindsey said she felt differently. She said she talked with her RA and has started the process of changing roommates and rooms.

“I asked to be put in a double as a single,” Lindsey said. “As soon as a room opens up I’m out.”

Samantha McDaniel can be reached at 581-2812 or slmcdaniel@eiu.edu.