I am a first year university student who has just moved into my flat to start the school year (I am in New Zealand, where the school year starts in February).
At my uni we have halls for students to live in. One of these "halls" are actually several blocks of flats with a commom room and shared laundry area. This is the hall I am in.
I am in a 3 bedroom flat. I am female, and my other two flatmates are male. This is just how we were allocated.
Why I want to change my flat:
One woman placed with two men… need I say more?
I feel isolated because I am the only woman in the flat, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the guys felt like they had to walk on eggshells to make me not uncomfortable, even though the guys themselves are fine.
I am living in a flat with two men who are currently pretty much strangers to me. Of course if I stay I will likely get to know them more, but currently even showering makes me feel weird because of this.
On my hall application they always take personal preferences into consideration, and I stated that I did not want to be the only woman. My future students advisor told me that they would never put only one person of a gender in a flat. One of the employees at the hall also said this.
Why I think I might be TA if I request a room change:
\- There is a rule that room changes are not supposed to be requested until two weeks after move in day, to get everyone settled in and not just requesting room changes because they don’t know their flatmates and such. Acting entitled to an exception being made for me will very likely cause conflict.
\- One of the other halls has flooded, meaning that the students in that hall need to be squeezed into other halls including mine. Me making a fuss adds to the difficulty of accommodating these students.
\- Both of the guys are super sweet and I do not think they are dangerous in the slightest. I don’t want them to think they did anything wrong. One of the guys is already incredibly self-conscious and even brought a gift from his country to give to whomever his flatmate would be to "compensate" for his poor english (he is an international student, and so is our other flatmate.). (He gave the gift to me, but I have not opened it yet because of this situation).
In the flat my two flatmates prefer to communicate in Mandarin, which is their native language, but said they will try to make an effort to speak in English more for me. Earlier on one of them apologised to me for not speaking a lot of english in the flat, and explained that he was self conscious when he spoke english because he didn’t think he was very good (I thought his english was fine but what do I know I guess). I don’t think this is a fair situation for either of us, but I also really don’t want to upset my flatmate because he is trying so hard to accommodate me and he is super lovely.
The gift from him just makes this even more difficult because he gave me a gift and yet I am wanting to leave because of his gender.
edit: typo
edit 2: there are four and five person flats as well as three person, which is how there can be coed flats without just having one person of their gender
NTA
While the university has a policy of waiting 2 weeks for good reason, there are also very good reasons to make sure that you are understood right now. There might not be much if anything that student housing can do immediately. It still seems like it is a situation where you should let them know what is going on and possibly get help sooner.
You can ask. Just be prepared that you may end up in a worse situation than you have now.
Best of luck.
I believe the 2 week wait is to deal with personality clashes and to give it time to adjust. Being the only female with 2 males may fall under a different kind of need.
I would raise it now – it seems odd that many people told you that you would not be the only women in a flat and then that happened? Maybe it’s a technical mistake
I think that’s quite likely. When they moved me in, my room had a name tag with someone else’s name on it. They just took the name tag off the door and let me move into the room.
That does seem a little bit odd and would lead me to believe a technical mistake as well.
Who is the “they’ here?