Parents use Facebook to Screen Out Gay Roommates

Parents are increasingly screening the Facebook profile of their kids' future college roommates, and are asking schools to change the assignment based upon what they discover online.

"They were getting an impression — false or accurate — of what the student would be like to live with," says Magda Manetas of The College of New Jersey in Ewing to USA TODAY.

Housing officials say parents who cite Facebook most frequently mention party-related content and photos as their primary concerns. Parents sometimes see cups in photos and make the leap to alcohol and drugs, Manetas says.

But Robin Berkowitz-Smith of Syracuse University says race, religion and sexual orientation are the top three concerns from parents contacting officials there.

Maureen Wark of Suffolk University in Boston also ranked sexual orientation as a top concern of parents. Wark recalls getting a call from a parent who had "psychological and sanitary concerns" about a student's new roommates, both of whom were gay men.

"People don't give other people a chance," she says.

Most of the schools contacted by USA TODAY say they have not made roommate changes as a result of such calls from parents.

Administrators at some schools have begun to talk to students and parents in advance about the tendency to look up roommates online. Paul Evans of the University of Wisconsin-Madison now includes a statement about social-networking sites in orientation literature for first-year students.

"It can be a problem, and we're just trying to warn people about taking everything that they see on there as fact," he says.