APARTMENT GUIDE
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plates, silverware and cups were left unattended. Tom said he was angry not only because it "made the place look crappy" but because he was concerned for his own well-being.
"It got so bad that there was mold covering the stuff," Cox said. "We couldn't stay in the apartment because it smelled so bad."
According to Cox, his roommate's reluctance to wash his own dishes was because of his newfound obsession with World of Warcraft, the massive online role-playing game.
"He was just lazy and
"I came home and the smell was so bad that I couldn't take it anymore and started throwing his dishes off the balcony."
awoken by the screams of his roommate who had discovered the pile of shattered tableware.
was always playing World of Warcraft," Cox said. "The dishes had to get done, and I ended up doing them even though half of them weren't mine."
Cox's futile attempt at keeping the kitchen clean only caused him to become more frustrated with his gaming-obsessed roommate. Eventually, he could no longer stand the sight of his roommate's unwashed and moldy dishes, causing him to erupt into a fit of rage.
"I've never seen my roommate that mad at me," Cox said.
"I came home, and the smell was so bad that I couldn't take it anymore and started throwing his dishes off of the balcony," Cox said. "In retrospect, it wasn't the best idea."
Immediately following Cox's furious rampage he decided to take a nap. He was soon
TOM COX Shawnee senior
In the weeks that followed, his roommate began to clean his own dishes, or the few that hadn't been broken. Cox was relieved, though he admits that his actions were not that most admirable, or conventional. Even so, the two of them remained good friends and roommates into their junior year.
One student ran into trouble when his roommate started selling drugs from their apartment. "It almost got to the point where I didn't want to go home because I was unsure of who would greet me at the door," the student said.
Max Rinkel/KANSAN
"After awhile, it turned into a running joke," Cox said. "Every time I would get mad at him, I would threaten to break his dishes again."
FOUR'S COMPANY
The student who shared the following story requested to be kept anonymous to avoid potential confrontations. We'll call him John.
While setting ground rules for their threebedroom apartment at Meadowbrook at the beginning of his junior year, John and his two roommates agreed that they would limit the amount of time their girlfriends would visit. The decision was made to prevent future disagreements or conflicts as the year progressed.
"It's easier to set rules beforehand rather than make the policy later," John said. "We were just making ground rules for different things, and because so many people tend to have problems with roommate relationships,
we just decided to deal with it then."
This truce was soon to be broken as one of John's roommates, who had been dating his
SEE BAD ROOMATES ON PAGE 10
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