Posted on 07/18/2008 10:50:31 AM PDT by LAforme2008
Jack and Jill’ aren’t allowed to live together at the University of Kansas yet, but more and more school are allowing members of the opposite sex to live together .
Most colleges didn’t allow students of different genders to live in the same dormitory 40 years ago.
After gender-neutral buildings were opened, universities began to allow members of the opposite sex to live on the same floor. Now, there’s a new gender-based issue to debate in student housing.
“We’re at the next phase in the evolution,” Jeffrey Chang, co-founder of the National Student Genderblind Campaign, said. “Why can’t men and women take the next step and live together?”
Chang, a senior at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., started the national campaign for gender-neutral dorm rooms after he was not allowed to share a room with one of his close female friends his freshman year.
It caught on. National news organizations such as USA Today and CNN featured the National Student Genderblind Campaign in stories. Students experiencing rejection like Chang began reaching out to the organization. And Chang said the number of schools allowing gender-neutral rooms doubled, from 15 to 30.
“Whether or not schools are actually doing this is one thing,” Chang said. “But schools are actually talking about it. Students are talking about it. That’s the thing I’m most happy about.”
James Baumann, director of communications at the Association of College and University Housing Officials, said the trend was mostly limited to small liberal arts colleges before the campaign. Bigger universities started to take notice.
Public state universities such as the University of California and the University of Michigan started permitting members of the opposite sex to live together this year. But Baumann stopped short of calling the trend the future of student housing.
“There are going to be colleges that are never going to implement this policy,” Baumann said. “It’s not part of their campus culture.”
Don’t consider the University of Kansas one of those schools. Diana Robertson, director of the Department of Student Housing, said the University doesn’t currently offer gender-neutral rooms but that it would be discussed the next time the department planned major renovations.
She said the University’s buildings weren’t structurally set up well enough for it to happen yet. On floors that contain members of both sexes at the University, males go on one side and females on the other. Gender-specific bathrooms are in place on both ends.
The Department of Student Housing would have to change that before enacting a gender-neutral room policy. Robertson said other than that, not much would change if different genders were allowed to live together.
“No matter the gender, it all comes down to communication between the roommates,” Robertson said.
After the campaign began receiving national attention, Chang said he started to receive hate mail. Critics of the campaign believe the policy promotes promiscuity.
Robertson’s only concern would be if a heterosexual couple lived together and broke up during the course of the year. Baumann said many bloggers disagreed with the policy for the same reason as Robertson.
“I think they get tied up on the boyfriends and girlfriends living together aspect,” he said, “instead of an opportunity for people to live in a housing arrangement where they feel comfortable.”
That’s one of the main messages of the National Student Genderblind Campaign. Chang said the transgender community has been a big supporter of the campaign because transgender people often feel like they are unable to live with someone who they have the most in common with.
Whatever the reasons, the National Genderblind Campaign thinks gender-neutral rooms should be an option to every student.
“A college student is an adult and should be able to choose someone they feel comfortable with,” Chang said. “Regardless of gender.”
Not fair that only homosexuals get to have their lovers room together.
How soon before colleges start including co-ed bathrooms?
I wish colleges would go back to the days where the emphasis was on learning, and not about how their dormitories were arranged.
To be honest, it wasn't that bad. It's not like anybody was showering together. It was probably more fun for the guys in the dorms, being ... ahem, *loud* when using the bathroom.
As for having guys and girls live together in the same ROOMS ... well, I dunno about that one. Seems ridiculous to me, as in they're seriously "forcing" the idea upon people.
"Look at us, look at us! We've EVOLVED! We are SO OPEN-MINDED!"
Oh, how liberal!
Yes, let’s further convince girls to behave like sluts.
Not to mention gross sexual imposition, rape, intimidation. Imagine when a girl comes back to the dorm after a few drinks and a guy (who shouldn’t be there) sticks his foot in the door.
More insanity in the name of liberalism!
Informal shacking-up was going on in the City of Evil (Cornell U.) in the 1970s...and I suspect long before then.
I lived in a coed dorm 24 years ago. The floors were separated by sexes.
Coed Dorms, Coed Floors — Now, Coed Rooms
To the Astonishment of Some Parents, Colleges Allow Coed Dorm Rooms [Student Genderblind Campaign..]
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070157/
Or stare at others on the floor naked in the bathroom/lockerroom.
Some schools (like Penn) have unisex bathrooms.
I don't recall being shocked or titillated.
SeeBS Viacom has been pushing this for over a decade on MTV's Real World. There actually seems to be planning in the cast selection committee to see that at least some 'hookups' occur in the season/semester.
It was the same at my college from 2004-2008. When you went through the housing lottery, you picked whatever room you wanted and if your neighbors were of the opposite sex, so be it. Only a few buildings had co-ed floors with common bathrooms (however these buildings had gender-specific bathrooms on different floors), but most rooms on campus had their own bathroom(s) inside the suite so it was a non-issue.
This is no big deal. College students are adults and as such the university doesn’t need to be playing mommy and daddy. It’s not as though students in single sex dorms are in any way chaste.
| Universities see rising amount of co-ed dorms
Or, as the dictionary puts it... amount or number ? Amount is normally used with singular forms of words or meanings that have no plural, that is, so-called uncountable or mass nouns such as coal, happiness, and warfare, whereas number is used with plural nouns such as books, questions, and ships . • a large amount of coal. • any amount of happiness. • a large number of books.... a rising number of dorms. |
The editor needs better journalism training. It should be “number” of dorms, not amount.
Women shouldn't even be allowed to stay in dorms at all.
They should live with their parents until they find a man who'll marry them.
Wanna shack up? Fine - it’s called an off-campus apartment, for pity’s sake.
I won’t think a lot of you, but I won’t shoot you, either. Why do the colleges have to conform?
Hell, why are they even in college? They should already know how to cook? /troglodyte-mode-off
I used a co-ed bathroom at Radcliffe College in the 1970s.
That was a shocker.
The proctor of the dorm also said we could smoke dope anywhere in the building - even out on the front stoop.
However, if we saw Cambridge police, we were to “Bogart” the joint and head inside pronto.
If it was a Harvard cop, no problem.
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