Ahhh Grasshopper...

[Avie]

I have a University NPC who seems to have renounced all material things. Eschewing the wordly concerns of mere eating, showering and socialising this enlightened soul spends all her time in her room not even emerging to attend classes. Has she:
A) Achieved transcendence
B) Been royally buggered up by a malfunctioning computer
C) Is a victim of piss-poor programming

YOU decide.

[Avie]

Or in other words.....HELLLPPPP!!!!!!

[SaraMK]

Can you *see* the dormie? Or is she invisible and all you see are the thought bubbles that tell you she's in her room?

[Avie]

I can see the thought bubbles. The ever-reliable Buy Mode also confirms that our anchoress is in her room.

[Nova]

I vote C and as a way to rectify the situation, go into buy mode while playing the dorm and upon reentering play mode she should walk out of her room.  I think this problem was addressed in a patch..could be mistaken though.

*Disregard my comment..just saw your new post 

[Avie]

Maybe so Nova but I'm a freakazoid mac-user. Buy mode merely shows me she is THERE.
Why she cannot be lured out of her starving, stinking and solitary lifestyle is a mystery

[gali]

You can't control NPCs in the dorm - only if some other controllable sim asks her/him to move in. Then you can contol the sims as much as you want, and direct him/her to go to class, etc.

[Avie]

Erm yes. I know that. The question is why this particular NPC has not left her room for five semesters. Normally NPC University sims will act autonomously as in going to classes etc. I want to know why this one stays in her room.

[MaayaBee]

Well, why don't you just move her with moveobjects on in buy mode? Shouldn't that solve your problem?

[Avie]

Dosen't work.

[jsalemi]

You don't happen to have JMP's 'nodormieprotect' hack installed, do you?  I've had dormies camp out in their rooms with this active, because it keeps some of their normal autonomous functions from working.  But I've also been able to move the dormie out of the room with moveobjects on, and then he/she usually goes on with life after a few sim-minutes.
 

[Nova]

Since I know absolutely nothing about the Mac version I'd like to change my answer to A.  Besides, she's probably in a better place now.

[Avie]

Nope. The ONLY universal hack I have is JMP's anti-missing exams one. I'm a bit wary of universal hacks but admit JMP knows what he is about..

[Avie]

Good stuff Nova...What is the sound of one hand clapping?

[BlueSoup]

I'm a bit wary of universal hacks but admit JMP knows what he is about..

You can trust TJ too. 

[jsalemi]

Nope. The ONLY universal hack I have is JMP's anti-missing exams one. I'm a bit wary of universal hacks but admit JMP knows what he is about..

Well, the dormie may just be buggered then. Since you say moveobjects isn't working on her, you might want to try adding  JMP's lot debugger to the dorm and forcing an error on all in-world objects (make sure you don't have testing cheats enabled first, though, or you'll be getting error popups for hours .  That'll reset all the objects on the lot, including the dormies, which may unstick her. Make sure your playables aren't doing anything important when you trigger it though, because they'll be reset too.

[Avie]

Good idea. i will try that

[Nova]

Dear Zen Master, perhaps you should ask your sim since she is the one who has achieved enlightenment...alas, I am a mere human.

[Ness]

I've seen dormies do that on occasion, too.  I'm not sure what it's about, though.

And just on what Gali said - there's no way to move dormies into dorms without cheating.  The move in option just doesn't appear on other sims when you are in a dorm, only on the rental properties.

[nectere]

oh dang you just solved one of my great mysteries ness! thanks! (I suppose it would have been better to have kept that lil tidbit of ignorance to myself and pretended I knew that - oh well lol)

Occasionally I have sims get stuck near their bed for some reason, I move the bed and viola they pop out of the room (usually not playable sims though)

[RainbowTigress]

I think I remember running into this when I played a dorm.  However, I got around it when I got my sims into the sorority, and then they asked the dormie to move in the sorority house after she pleged and joined the sorority.  I think that may have been when I discovered the infamous Greek Level 6 bug, and I was soooo pissed.  Fortunately I came to VS and found JM's fix for it, and I was much happier.  I would have had to wait at least 6 months for Maxis to fix it, but that's another subject...

I just recently found that pinhead has an addition to his moveinall hack that also allows you to move in dormies as well.  Just thought I'd share that, although it really doesn't answer your question as to why this particular dormie seems recalcitrant to coming out of her room.

[J. M. Pescado]

Nope. The ONLY universal hack I have is JMP's anti-missing exams one. I'm a bit wary of universal hacks but admit JMP knows what he is about..

Given how critical awesomeware is for the functioning of your game, the fact that you only have ONE is probably a part of the problem.

All Avies suck.

[syberspunk]

And just on what Gali said - there's no way to move dormies into dorms without cheating.  The move in option just doesn't appear on other sims when you are in a dorm, only on the rental properties.

For those of you who have OFB, there is a not so cheaty way to move in dormies that live in the same dorm as you with pinhead's move-in all hack found here. 

I like it because it doesn't feel so cheaty. I didn't want to have to use hacks just to make sims selectable. I wanted them to actually be part of the household, and the updated version of move-in all works perfectly. It even unhides the invisible dorm and brings in funds properly. Pinhead even fixed an error where movin in sims reports garbage values. The actual value that gets added to the household uses the correct code, but the dialog box was reporting bogus numbers. That alone makes it a worthwhile fix. You wouldn't even have to use the extended move-in options if you didn't want to (for children and teen townies, etc.).

Whoops... I see that rainbow already mentioned this. Well the link is up there if you wanna check it out.

Also, as jsalemi points out, the FFS Lot debugger is a great tool. Sometimes dormies would get stuck with their motives frozen. This may be the case in your game. If you click on the Lot debugger and the 'unfreeze motives' (or something like that) appears, that means that your dormies have stuck motives causing them to stand around pretty much frozen. You can try that first before doing the reset all objects method.

Another thing you can try is having your sim run into the room. If the sim is not sleeping or the door isn't locked, then you can just direct your sim to go into that dormie's room. If they are there and awake, and hopefully not braindead, they might start interacting with your sim. You could probably even shoo them out of their own room.

I have noticed that some dormies are still totally utterly braindead, and will stand around for a long while, even though I have free-will  on and the lot debugger does not show the option to unfreeze motives. Pescado has explained that some sims really are just braindead.

Ste

[RainbowTigress]

I'm not sure why, but after moving Vamsi into the Tri-Var Sorority house, she had her motives frozen for the longest time.  This was several months ago, before the Lot Debugger had all these awesome tools available.  I'm not even sure if the Lot Debugger existed then.  I don't know if it had to do with Vamsi being an ex-dormie, but it was annoying to have her always awake and never having to eat while the others did.  So she skilled a lot.  Somehow, somewhere along the way, she became unstuck and started functioning normally.