Colleges to allow co-ed rooms

Colleges to allow co-ed rooms

“Coed rooms make grade: Harvard eyes allowing opposite-sex roommates”

Harvard is considering making its dorm rooms gender-neutral - meaning brainiacs of both sexes would be able to bunk together - a spokesman for the Ivy League university told the Herald yesterday.
“It is something that is on the table,” said Robert Mitchell of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
The debate comes amid a nationwide move toward coed dorm rooms, including a decision Monday by Clark University in Worcester to allow men and women to room together beginning next fall.

So what’s the compelling reason for allowing such things?

“They had a very good rationale,” said Dean of Students Denise Darrigrand. “(The current policy) doesn’t acknowledge the fact that some people are gay. The new policy opens up options for people to live with someone with whom they are compatible. And, given other universities’ experience with this, the reality is men and women who do choose to room together usually aren’t dating.”

Of course, the Clark policy and the proposed Harvard policy don’t limit it to homosexuals rooming with heterosexuals of the opposite sex, thus anything goes. (Not that this is an ideal situation either. It doesn’t pre-empt possible problems.)

So how long before the first charge of roommate rape?

And let’s be honest about why the colleges are going along with this—the same reason they don’t really crack down on partying and drinking—because it’s another selling point to new students. Sex sells, as does booze, and everyone knows that prospective students want a party school.

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