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Columbia University in New York has always been on the cutting edge in academics and in housing fantastic public speakers. I have a few friends that are Columbia alumni and they’re as proud as new parents of their alma mater. Columbia University has always dictated a certain level of prestige and their continual forward-thinking antics are on the top ofeveryone’s ”most talked about” list this week.
Beginning Fall semester 2010, co-ed cohabitation will be allowed on campus. Students, excluding Freshmen, will be allowed to share a room in a designated quad with whomever they choose — male and female alike, no holds barred.
Some students are all for the innovative change; they feel that it will break down a lot of comfort barriers and will better prepare the students for “real life.” It will also allow same-sex couples to live together without the stigma of students wondering “are they or aren’t they” — choice is choice. To make such a choice available for all students would kind of even out the playing field and allow them to settle into what they’re most comfortable with.
However, some students aren’t as excited about the new prospect of a co-edcohab. Some opposed aren’t even that of a conservative “you shouldn’t live together before marriage” breed. Some of them actually kind of make a point. One female student interviewed states:
“It will damage the community on the floor if a couple moves in together and then is fighting all the time,” said sophomore AlexFrouman, 21, a student council representative. “It’s incredibly difficult to get a room change. The proposal is bad because of that risk that could adversely effect everyone on the hall.”
Although not in college, I have been there. My husband and I lived together (in sin!) before marriage and had rented a second floor apartment above another younger couple. These people would be up all hours of the night battling back and forth. They’d begin the morning by screaming and throwing things. The police were at the residence more than they were at the station, I think. It was seven months of pure, unadulterated hell. To make a long (loud) story short, we ended up moving because of the constant, rancorous fighting.
With that being said, as cool as I am with male and female living together prior to marriage, the female interviewee makes a point. When personal interactions become more of a focus than academia in the arena of higher education, where is the fine line?
I’m sure that there are some parents out there, too, that’ll pull their child’s funding faster than you can say “living in sin” should they find out that their precious, untainted child is living with a member of the opposite sex. Or worse, if the same parents find out that their daughter’s female roommate is actually their daughter’s girlfriend.
What do we think? Is it more innovation in motion or a bad circumstance waiting to happen?
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I think it’s a fine idea. And I don’t think that couples fighting is really that big a deal. When I was living in an all male dorm we had to deal with loud obnoxious people doing loud obnoxious things (including fighting).
I think that it should remain as it is.
I know that when I was in college, my dorm room was a refuge FROM the whole social scene. Fortunately, I had a great roommate, and we agreed on what was okay and what wasn’t.
The dorm itself was coed, and that was distraction enough.
Now, looking at it as a Mom?
Hmm. I just don’t think that it’s a good idea, really. I don’t have my head in the sand, I’m aware that my 17 year old daughter is sexually active – but I don’t think that when she goes off to college next fall that she is ready for that kind of 24/7 relationship.
I hope that made sense. I’m tired and I feel like I’m rambling.
umm… doesn’t anyone else have opposite sexed friends? I would much rather live with a guy than another girl.
Me too. I’m a slob, and most chicks are not into that. My guy friends wouldn’t care as much, and that alone would lead to less bitchfests.
I live with three boys, two of whom are my best friends in the world, and I LOVE it :) :) :)
As if its difficult for two twenty somethings to find a place to be intimate. I too would rather live with a female room mate.
Terrible idea.
Uhm, I don’t understand the problem. I really don’t. What’s the big difference between a couple or flat mates sharing? You can have terrible fights with a partner, I agree. But you can have fights that are just as bad with a flat mate.
Or is the set-up right now that nobody is sharing?
Anyways, the benefits aren’t just that friends/couples can share, the students will probably also be able to save on the rent…not a bad thing!
I don’t really understand all the fuss either…doesn’t it say you *can* live together, not *you have to*? So if you are uncomfortable with the idea of your child living together with someone from the opposite sex, than just say you don’t want that. Plus, how old are the kids? Aren’t they all legal and free to do what they want? Maybe living together with your partner will be a mistake. But how will you ever find out if you are not given the chance to make mistakes? How long are kids supposed to be cocooned by their parents before they let them out in the “real world”?
I am so undecided on this. I would have loved to share a room with my fiance in college and we pretty much did; I slept over a lot and in our fourth year we requested neighboring rooms and slept together basically every night. On the other hand I knew a few couples who would have definitely gone for that given the chance who split up halfway through the year. Given how hard it can be to change rooms that could be quite a horrible situation.
They’re also opening themselves up to law suits. I can see a girl having sex with her male room mate then regretting it and crying rape.
I think it’s probably best to reserve the co-ed accommodation for married students who are less likely to break up and if anyone else wants to share they can go to the private sector.
If you refer to the sanctity of the institution of marriage, I think you should ask Britney Spears or Peaches Geldoff. It’s not about marriage, it’s about maturity.
“I can see a girl having sex with her male room mate then regretting it and crying rape. ”
Seriously? I know false rape accusations happen (rather rarely actually), but that was the first thing you thought of? How about a male actually raping his female roommate?
This is true. I guess the false accusation jumped to mind before the legitimate one because I’d just been reading comments on another story on this blog about false accusation of rape.
The University of Pennsylvania instituted a similar policy a few years ago when I was an undergraduate there. As I understood it at the time, the decision was made in order to benefit LGBT students who may have been uncomfortable living with other members of their assigned gender. I do not recall hearing of any hetero- or homosexual couples using the new ruling to live together.
I have a feeling Columbia’s decision was based on similar reasoning.
I (thankfully) don’t live in the dorms at my university, but if I did there is not a snowball’s chance in hell this would happen (it’s a Ctholic university).
Frankly, I can’t even imagine how annoying it would be to have to listen to people having (possibly loud) sex next door while I’m trying to study. Dorm walls generally are not soundproof!
*CATHOLIC university
“Frankly, I can’t even imagine how annoying it would be to have to listen to people having (possibly loud) sex next door”
That’s something that students in non religious schools have to put up with anyway. You don’t have to live in the same room to have sex in a room.
Sex happens in dorm rooms whether or not the people involved are roommates…
Pretty much sums up the sex aspect of it, completely.
I go to Brown and a large proportion of our housing is gender-neutral… VERY few people actually enter the housing lottery and room with a significant other. All of the coed rooms that I know of are friends who have previously observed their roommate’s level of cleanliness and sleeping hours… by far the most important factors in a roommate relationship’s viability. Also, girls are often the ones sexiling their roommates, not just guys.
I don’t have a problem with the co-ed part, but I think that they should discourage these co-ed pairings from being couples, just as same-sex couples probably shouldn’t get paired up in res.
Living with your SO while in residence (when you’re probably going to break up with them eventually anyway), is a bad idea and kind of sucks the fun out of going to school and doing new things with new people.
“I think that they should discourage these co-ed pairings from being couples”
That’s a nice idea in theory, but how well would it work out in practice?
That’s silly Mal, how can you do it? It might be a same-sex couple or it might two girls who are best friends, you never know.
I mean the same-sex couple pairing up, sorry :)
Like TheLisa said, why can’t y’all understand that sometimes, people are not backwards and immature enough to discount people of the opposite gender as friends? Frankly, if my school did this my living situation would be infinitely easier. I mean, sure, couples MIGHT move in and make things awkward. But the majority will just be friends. I know, no one believes that a girl and a guy can be friends without a) there being sex or b) the guy raping the girl, but trust me, it happens. Often. This isn’t the Victorian Era. Today’s youth weren’t raised to shriek in terror when they see someone of the opposite sex in their pajamas.
There’s a difference between friends and room mates. I have no problem with a guy friend seeing me in my pajamas but I wouldn’t want to share a room with them. I wouldn’t want them to see my underwear hanging up to dry or vice versa. I certainly wouldn’t want them to see me getting dressed. Not that I was particularly keen on having a female room mate either but getting a single room as a freshman was practically impossible unless you wanted to almost twice as much or live 30+ minutes from the library and my school.
…And that’s why it’s optional.
I’m very curious as to why “if my school did this my living situation would be infinitely easier”
My school had this policy in place years ago and as far as I know, it’s never been a problem. You just had to send in another form if you wanted to live with someone who had a different legal gender. I lived with my two best friends one year (both gay men) and it worked out well. In other schools, probably a random straight gay would have been assigned to live with them. That would had been a little awkward…
I only think it’s risky because what if a fickle couple break up during the year? Understandably you would give it a lot of thought before deciding to live together and maybe only do it if you’re serious about each other, but things happen and couples do break up. The Columbia student interviewed said it was really dificult to get a room change, I can’t even imagine the awkwardness if you broke up under bad circumstances.
My college, Clark University, already has a coed-rooming policy, and has for a while (we’re a very liberal liberal arts school), and I haven’t heard of too many problems with it, but then, this is my first year here and they don’t allow it for first-years.
They also strongly discourage couples from using it to live together on campus, for the possibility of a break-up, but its pretty easy to switch rooms on campus, so that makes things easier, I think.
But I see no reason why a guy and girl shouldn’t be able to live together – the poeple who take the option have probably thought it out longer than the poeple who choose same-sex friends to live with.
While I was a student I lived in all kinds of set-ups. A dorm room with a shared kitchen, a house shared with two guys and two girls, twice in a flat shared with a guy and once on my own (yes, I moved a lot…). It was fine most of the time. I had some really amazing flat mates.
Only once, one of the guys suddenly had decided that I was to be the woman of his life and already knew the names of our future children. I moved out as fast as I could.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing. You learn a lot about people. And especially in the beginning it can be useful, when you’re not used to be on your own so much.
As with the couples? I don’t know. Here in Denmark the average age of students is quite high compared to other countries (on average the students complete their Master when they’re 29-30 years old) and you often have students in stable long term relationships (quite a few also with kids). So for me that’s just normal. But here, a lot of the students don’t live in dorms anyways, they just rent and share normal flats in town. We don’t have the same kind of campus set-up.
I can imagine that very young couples might not be that stable but I still think that friends living together might fight and cause problems just as much as a couple that’s breaking up. So I just don’t think it’s a good argument to say couples can ruin the social climate. Fighting friends can do the same.
Why is there the assumption that everyone would be coupled up? You could live with someone of the opposite sex and not be in a relationship…
I dunno, pretty much everyone I know in various unis in the UK have single rooms anyway- why don’t they in America?