Alyssa GregoryCoed residence halls are the wave of the future. Washington University has already jumped on the bandwagon by establishing coed freshmen floors, where young men and women mingle unrestrained. However, the upper class suites and apartments are separated by gender. Since upperclassmen associate more with their suitemates than their floormates, this stifles interaction with members of the opposite sex. WU should update its housing policy to allow students residing in campus-owned apartments and suites to live with members of the opposite sex, so long as they don’t physically share the same bedroom.
Asking for coed apartments and suites isn’t about forcing men and women to live together against their will. Students remaining on campus after freshmen year usually choose their own suitemates. Now they would simply be given the option of considering men and women as potential roommates. Residents could even sign a waiver saying they understand the situations that can arise out of living in a coed apartment or suite, thus reducing the university’s liability.
Most arguments against coed residence halls are based on moral and sexual grounds; there’s too much potential for funny business to be going on behind those closed doors. Apparently, placing two young college coeds in the same apartment is a sufficient condition for sex. This is a pretty bleak (or exciting, depending on your point of view) depiction of college students. While college life would certainly be more interesting if we all had a ‘copulate-on-sight’ attitude toward sex, this generally is not the case.
Despite popular opinion, college students can, in fact, restrain themselves sexually when in the presence of a potential partner. Our experience living in coed freshman halls has taught us that much. There’s something about seeing someone stumbling to the bathroom at 3:00 a.m. that suppresses the desire to jump on each other and start mating.
But more important than this is the question of whether the university should even be trying to regulate these types of situations. As adults, college students are more than capable of weighing options and making what they consider to be the best decisions for themselves. WU should respect students’ independence and maturity by allowing them to choose for themselves whether or not to live in a coed apartment or suite.
Other schools have already taken this initiative. Swarthmore, Haverford, and Wesleyan all currently allow male and female students to live together in the same room. These policies have been in place for several years, and students seem to be surviving the change. Swarthmore instituted its policy in response to complaints by gay and lesbian students who felt more comfortable with a roommate of the opposite sex.
This complaint is legitimate and WU should consider it. WU’s policy as it stands now is heterosexist because it assumes that all students are heterosexual and shouldn’t mind same sex living arrangements. In fact, a significant number of students here are not heterosexual, and living with a roommate of the same sex may not be the best option for them. If WU updated its policy, these students, and all other students as well, would be given the opportunity to decide for themselves what their best option is.
Students living in private, non-WU owned apartments often choose to make their apartment coed. Students have been making this work off campus for years now. The university should not be imposing a double standard by refusing to allow its on-campus residents the same freedom of choice.
One potential downside is that a couple may choose to live together, break up, and then be stuck in the same apartment or suite. However, this is a mistake that students should be allowed to make on their own, rather than the university interceding to ‘protect’ them from themselves.
Most people will only experience living with the opposite sex when they move in with a spouse or significant other. Allowing students the option of living in a coed suite or apartment would broaden their horizons as they learn to navigate all the intricacies involved when men and women inhabit the same space. In the end, this policy would be about giving WU students the opportunity of deciding for themselves what their ideal living situation is, instead of the school deciding for them.