And if there's one that does have such a rule on the books, I haven't found it yet either. William Fox, a sociology professor at Skidmore College, learned just how popular the myth was when he conducted a survey of students at Skidmore and on the State University of New York's campus at New Paltz in the mid-1980s. About half of the 82 students surveyed at Skidmore believed that their college had such a policy, and four out of five thought that at least some other colleges did. At New Paltz, about 125 of the 150 students surveyed believed that it was true there, and all but 15 thought it was true at other colleges. Yet another variation gives the surviving roommate first pick in the next housing lottery.
Students see things such as grades as absolutely arbitrary.
In an anthology of folklore papers in 1990, he wrote that the rumor seemed to be fairly new. It's doubtful that students who attended college during times of unrest, such as the late '60s, would have painted administrators in such a favorable light, he says. Higher education is ripe for satire, and I think a little satire is a good thing. We sometimes take ourselves a little too seriously. But at institutions where students have been lost to suicide in recent years, the new attention to the legend isn't generating many chuckles.