You’re at your dorm with your date and about to hook up, but your roommate walks in, now what? Well, some Portland State University students chimed in on this awkward dorm situation. Jacob Stein, a sophomore and King Albert housing resident at PSU, says, “I would tell them to get the hell out and let me be intimate.” Some choose direct confrontation and others take a more passive approach. Robert Penziol, a freshmen and Ondine resident at PSU, says he would awkwardly wait for them to leave.

There are many ways to go about avoiding this unfavorable situation. First, communicate with your roommate and compromise on something you both feel comfortable with. You can negotiate days and times that you are guaranteed privacy or establish a system. This could be a code that would alert your roommates not to enter the room. Instead of the cheesy sock or cowboy hat on the door, you might want to decide on something more demure that you and your roommate are aware of, but subtle enough that your RA won’t know what’s going on.

A PSU student, who prefers to remain anonymous, uses a dry erase board on their door to write an elusive sex code, only he and his roommate distinguish. They’ve changed it over time when others started catching on, but so far they’ve used the phrases: Better than chocolate, hunting rabbits, batter dip the cranny ax in the gut locker, and cannonball the fiddle cove with the pork steeple. Clearly, students at the PSU dorms are getting creative at avoiding the elephant in the room… What would/do you do?