BOSTON (AP) — A former student at a Roman Catholic college has filed a lawsuit against the school, claiming administrators didn’t do enough to help her when she complained that her roommate was having too much sex in their dorm room.
Lindsay Blankmeyer said in a federal lawsuit that she suffered from depression and attention deficit disorder before she enrolled at Stonehill College, but was driven into a suicidal depression after school officials wouldn’t give her reasonable housing alternatives to get her away from her roommate at the school in Easton, Mass.
Blankmeyer said her roommate had sex with her boyfriend while she was trying to sleep just feet away and also participated in „sexually inappropriate video chatting“ while Blankmeyer was in the dorm room.
After trying unsuccessfully to persuade school officials to force her roommate to move out or to give her an acceptable private room, Blankmeyer ended up living at a hotel, according to the lawsuit filed earlier this week.
„Stonehill refused Lindsay’s request for a single room and in the following weeks and months Lindsay fell into a dark and suicidal depression requiring her to take a leave of absence from school and undergo extensive psychiatric and medical treatment,“ the lawsuit states.
Blankmeyer eventually completed her final semester of school at her home in New York and received a bachelor’s of arts degree in Sept 2011. Blankmeyer enrolled as a freshman in 2007 but the lawsuit said problems began her senior year.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Boston earlier this week, seeks unspecified damages.
Stonehill spokeswoman Kristen Magda said the college responded „swiftly and professionally“ to Blackmeyer’s complaints about her roommate, first trying to resolve the dispute through mediation with a residence director, then by giving Blankmeyer „multiple options“ for campus housing, including a private room.
„At no time did the student notify college staff that her concerns involved her roommate’s sexual activity,“ Magda said Friday.
Blankmeyer’s lawyers did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
In the lawsuit, Blankmeyer says the college offered her two options, one was moving to another dorm where she would live in a room that was previously used as a study lounge and was a „small cubicle-like space.“ The other option was to move to a dorm with a reputation as a „party dorm“ to live with a girl Blankmeyer did not know.
By DENISE LAVOIE, AP Legal Affairs Writer – Mar 2, 2012
Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
