When assigning roommates to students, Texas A&M's Department of Residence Life does not consider an individuals past sexual offenses. Apartment complexes and apartment locators in College Station do not either, and this raises a question to anyone who is to be an assigned roommate. Should there be a system to screen past sex offenders from the roommate assignment process?
Screening for sex offenses when assigning a roommate is unnecessary, and can lead to complications involving misrepresentation of character. Sex offender screening would raise questions of how much more past information should be collected. If a pot-luck candidate is concerned about a potential roommate, then an inquiry into the person's past should be a private matter between those people, and not one for the school or any other entity to handle.
Classifying a person as a sex offender is dubious in itself. Certainly, individuals convicted of rape or aggravated sexual assault are members of a group rightfully marked dangerous to society. It is known that sexual predators show repetitive criminal behavior, and that previous offenders are likely to strike again.
However, an 18-year-old can be convicted for indecency with a child if involved with a consenting 16-year-old, and will be labeled a sex offender by the state. In this way, a situation involving a junior and a senior in high school can be misconstrued to imply something criminal. Adding this information to a housing application would not correctly identify the type of person it is describing.
Though some sex offenders are harmless, many convicted sex offenders are legitimate dangers to society. This does not, however, give any more weight to the argument that roommate services should be responsible for finding and weeding these individuals out.
According to the Texas Department of Public Safety sex offender registration database, the majority of sex offenders in Bryan and College Station are over the age of 25, making it highly unlikely for a student looking for a roommate through a finder service to be paired with a registered sex offender. Asserting that it is the service's responsibility to check each applicant's background information for a doubtful qualification is ludicrous.
When it comes to on-campus living, many freshmen go pot-luck for their roommate and are paired with a person they do not know. This is a different situation from pulling roommates from the Bryan-College Station area. Most incoming freshmen come from areas outside Bryan-College Station, where data on sex offender age may be different. Again, the responsibility of criminal screening should not be on the Department of Residence Life. It is not its job to search for convicted sex offenders, just as it is not its job to search for and bring attention to convicted felons.
There is no guarantee that a potential roommate will be everything they are expected to be. By using a roommate service or letting A&M pick, a student automatically assumes the risk that their roommate could be any type of undesirable person, including a sex offender. It is up to the student, if concerned, to find out personal information about a potential roommate for themselves. The chance of rooming with a dangerous felon is pretty slim.
