 From left, Brienna Dees, Pat Vescio, Kayla Capponi and Alexia Martinez often hang out together in Capponi's dorm room at the State University of New York at Oswego. Martinez is a sophomore, the other three are freshmen. (Photo by John Berry) |
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Posted on 12/03/2007 7:41:43 AM PST by Incorrigible
By REBECCA JAMES
From left, Brienna Dees, Pat Vescio, Kayla Capponi and Alexia Martinez often hang out together in Capponi's dorm room at the State University of New York at Oswego. Martinez is a sophomore, the other three are freshmen. (Photo by John Berry) |
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A new wave of coed housing that allows men and women to share rooms is hitting campuses around the country, and Cornell University senior Vince Hartman thinks it's about time.
"A lot of students are over the age of 18 and they have friends that are both guys and girls," Hartman said. "It's just a normal thing friends living together."
This semester, Cornell's Student Assembly, at Hartman's urging, endorsed adding a "gender-neutral housing" option like those already in place at other schools including Oberlin, Swarthmore and Wesleyan and approved earlier in the year at Dartmouth and Carnegie Mellon.
The term "gender-neutral" arose among advocates for transgender students who don't consider themselves to be entirely male or female. That applies to just a few students.
But the result of designating rooms or suites as gender-neutral is that it takes coed living to a level not seen yet on many campuses: Men and women could be roommates.
Cornell's administration is reviewing the request from the Student Assembly to start a gender-neutral housing option next year.
College dorms started to go coed in the 1960s, although the trend didn't arrive at many East Coast campuses until the 1970s and still isn't universal. Many schools have some single-sex dorms. Mississippi bans coed dorms altogether.
While some schools have coed floors of dorms, many follow what was, until recently, the practice at State University of New York at Oswego: Men and women share a building but are always on separate floors or wings.
"Almost universally, students want coed," said Chuck Weeks, director of residence life at SUNY Oswego. "What I have observed is that when students rent apartments off campus, it's pretty common to have mixed genders in the apartments."
SUNY Oswego is planning to allow coed apartments in a new complex planned for 2010 and the school has introduced coed floors in two recently renovated buildings.
Freshman Pat Vescio chose to live in Riggs Hall before he knew it was coed, but he said he appreciates the mix.
"You get to socialize with men and women. You'll have both male and female friends," said Vescio, from Solvay, N.Y. "Having girls around gives you a reason to keep your room clean."
Vescio said he notices a difference when he visits friends on all-male floors.
"It's a lot louder and a lot wilder," he said. "You never see girls at all."
Residential life officials say coed living often brings out the best in both men and women.
"It's a generalization, but often in all-male facilities there is more damage, more issues with anger management, more vandalism and cleanliness issues," said Jennifer Adams, Colgate University's director of residential life. "Often in all-female halls, there are more issues with high emotion, inability to reach consensus on building issues and more female competition."
Coed housing is new to Wells College, formerly a women's college. When men arrived three years ago, some dormitories went coed. One suite-style residence hall is completely coed and men and women may share a six-person suite with one bathroom, said Joel Andrew McCarthy, associate dean of students.
Some students have asked whether double rooms could be coed, but the college hasn't decided whether to allow that, McCarthy said.
Allowing men and women to room together would technically allow boyfriends and girlfriends to live together, but both students and staff often discourage that idea. At Swarthmore, students coined the phrase "no hallcest" and McCarthy said he hasn't heard from many students endorsing the idea of couples sharing rooms.
"The majority of those interested have been men who want to live with a friend who is a woman," he said.
Deciding whether bathrooms should be coed or gender-neutral is a separate issue.
While the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition lists 30 U.S. campuses that provide gender-neutral housing, the list of those with gender-neutral bathrooms is longer than 140.
Those are typically single-stall and lockable. Not only do people with gender identity issues like them, Adams said, they also are popular for visiting families and people with certain health conditions.
Hamilton College is one of the rare schools where coed bathrooms are common in the dorms.
"It never really bothered me, sharing the bathroom with boys, but I grew up sharing a bathroom with my brother so it wasn't a huge jump from brushing my teeth next to him, to some other guy," Hamilton senior Aliya Robbins said.
Students on coed floors decide each year whether the hall bathroom should be coed. If anyone is uncomfortable, the bathroom becomes single-sex; the other students just have to go farther to get to a bathroom, said Travis Hill, director of residential life at Hamilton.
This year, Hamilton turned some coed floors back to single-sex so there would be fewer coed bathrooms, because some students, usually freshmen, object to them, Hill said. Upperclass students seem comfortable with coed bathrooms and coed housing, he said.
"Personally, I think it's a good thing for people to use coed bathrooms," Robbins said. "It makes you grow up a bit and forces you to become more secure in yourself."
(Rebecca James is a staff writer for The Post-Standard of Syracuse, N.Y. She can be contacted at citynews(at)syracuse.com.)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
Are you kidding? Have you SEEN how liberals parent their children?
When my daughter went off to college in 1989 I really didn’t mind having guys in her dorm. I felt she was a little safer with a bunch of guys living upstairs as opposed to a dorm filled with women. The guys did look out for the girls. She also formed somed wonderful, lasting friendships with said guys.
“Most of the students are over 18 and going to school on Daddy’s dime.”
So if Daddy (or Mommy) raises the issue with his own kid, then that’s between them. Other students DO pay their own way... with loans. Heard of them? I know in my house, we talk quite often with Sallie Mae.
Either way, an adult is an adult. Do you have something against adults making their own decisions?
Surrey, that was my experience as well. :)
Not Fair!! I was in college in the 50’s and this isn’t fair at all. I want to go back to college and start all over. I could have all 3 of my college girlfriends living with me at one time, Groovy!
At MIT, we had kegs for this reason, and that was in the 80s.
“Soon I expect the university to allow drinking and drug use on campus. After all the kids are going to do it anyway and at least they will be able to do it in a “safe environment”. Universities are becoming the equivalent of a “cool mom”.”
It’s actually gotten much tougher on most campuses to drink and do drugs in the dorms. When I was in college in the 70s there was illegal alcohol and drugs all over the place. No one bothered you. Most student unions had a place you could buy cheap pitchers of beer. Not any more.
LOL! That reminds me of the student who once told me the college should provide the students with free contraceptives. She said “I’m an adult and I can have sex if I want to”. I asked her why she couldn’t buy her own contraceptives if she’s an adult. Her answer was that it’s, like, you know, like, too hard to, like, you know, go to the drug store, like, every time the opportunity for sex, like, comes up.
Yeah, real adult.
Pat may be smiling now but just wait...
"Pay their own way" = working. Which I did.
Anything else is playing on somebody else's dime.
I don't really consider college students who are playing on somebody else's dime to be adults.
I know that attitude galls a lot of them ... but that's not my problem.
My old GF went to Emerson. She had two roommates. One was hot the other not so much. I bought them so many beers at Crossroads (?). I never got to write that article to Penthouse!
The sexualization of our children has gone way too far. This is not acceptable to parents with daughters. Young men are what they are. Girls will be preyed upon and left, like a buck deer in rut. It is asking for even more trouble than we have now. What an idiotic idea to have come from adults in charge.
'74, VII-A, PKT
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