Posted on 08/18/2010 9:50:52 AM PDT by AccuracyAcademia
Until recently, campus roommates were a non-negotiable item for incoming college freshmen. If a study-holic was matched with a party animal, too bad. But now, things are changing.
When incoming freshmen receive their new roommate assignments, the first thing they do is look them up on Facebook.
At the University of Florida, for example, the school decided to give in to the social media phenomenon by using a Facebook application called RoomBug so that students could check out prospective roommates’ habits i.e. their neatness and sleep schedules. More than 25 percent of this year’s incoming freshmen have used this service so far.
However other schools have taken the opposite tack. Syracuse University, which still uses the random roommate selection process, emails roommate information late Friday afternoon, allowing recipients a 48-hour cooling off period before calling to complain, according to Greg Victory, who oversees freshman orientation at the school.
Other schools still hesitate to turn the process over to new media “for fear that racial, religious and sexual minorities might be singled out or excluded.”
But traditionalists like Larry Davis, assistant residence life director at the University of Wisconsin, Madison defend the current procedure “This is an institution of higher learning, and we expect [students] to learn and think, says Davis, adding that “taking on a random roommate is a good experience to have.”
Deborah Lambert writes the Squeaky Chalk column for Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.
Are college roommate assignments in this enlightened age sex indifferent/neutral, or do students wishing to have a roommate of their opposite sex get to make their own personal selections?
There are some colleges which do allow opposite sex roommates. May be hard to believe, but we went from co-ed dorms where the individual rooms had residents only of the same sex, to now saying that the sex of roommates doesn’t matter.
And, have heard that some of these students say that, just because you have opposite sex roommates, it doesn’t mean that somebody is having a sexual relationship, and that we shouldn’t jump to those conclusions.
Bottom line is that these young people in these colleges and dorms think the older generation has too many “hang-ups” about these living arrangements.
It’s hard to believe that there was a time when dorms were stricly segregated by sex, and that there were strict limits on visitation by the opposite sex in the dorms.
Guess I’m old! Young men should not have to deal with living in close quarters with young women at that age. Most think of the safety of the young women, but I have a son and I could see this as a problem for him!
I wonder how many false reports of rape have been filed in these situations.
Other schools still hesitate to turn the process over to new media “for fear that racial, religious and sexual minorities might be singled out or excluded.”
What kind of “sexual minority” is there? You’re either an innie, or an outie, right?
<Bottom line is that these young people in these colleges and dorms think the older generation has too many “hang-ups” about these living arrangements.
Nothing new. When I went to college in the ‘70s, we had coed dorms with boy-girl-boy-girl room assignments. I begged my parents to let me live in one of those arrangements, rather than a girls’ dorm. Having come from an all girls prep school, I was ready to see some guys! Plus, as I reasoned at the time, if I got an apartment, my parents couldn’t regulate who lived next door to me.
We didn’t have quiet hours, no locks on the doors to the building, everything free and easy.
Well, fast forward and my son ends up at the same school in the mid 1990s. Now they had quiet hours, all kinds of building security, sexes by floor rather than by room. I recently asked my son if he had felt restricted by all this and he said no, it was nice to know there were enforceable quiet hours to make sure people shut up and he didn’t need to see girls in the bathroom.
Some things sound really cool at the time, but living in close quarters, with a bunch of young people, and with no rules is pretty much a recipe for disaster.
Just a note, there was some sexual activity amongst dorm mates, but not as much as you’d think. Maybe too close contact, but also a feeling that we were all friends, and not ‘hook ups.’ It’s awful hard to break up and not have a lot of drama when your significant other lives on the same floor.
Back in the mid-60’s, men were not allowed on the residence floors of a girl’s dorm (except to help moving in/out at the beginning/end of school term).
When you went to the girls dorm to pick up a date, you had to sign her out and back in, before curfew. They had large parlors with lots of sofas to sit and talk. Talk, period.
[Thus endeth the report of co-educational regulations during the early Jurassic Period]
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