Twenty colleges and universities now let men and women share dorm rooms, reports the Christian Science Monitor.
It’s the final frontier in the decades-long march away from gender separation in college dorms, hallways, and even bathrooms.
While sharing a room comes unnervingly close in the minds of many parents to sharing a bed, advocates for the new arrangements say sexual intimacy rarely plays a role with those who sign up. Instead, for a younger generation it is increasingly common for men and women to just be friends. And some gay and transgendered students welcome the chance to avoid same-sex roommates whom they may not be comfortable around, or who may not accept them.
Most roommates are just friends, says the Monitor. Students are reluctant to get too close to someone who lives too close. Dating someone in the same corridor is known as hallcest or dormcest.
About Joanne
Sharing a bed doesn’t necessarily imply sex, either, but as they say, it is a safe bet.
My son has been in a couple of situations with female friends as apartment mates, but that’s a lot different from sharing a dorm room. Those rooms are AWFULLY small.
And of course they are always “just friends” or Gay.
Sure.
“it is increasingly common for men and women to just be friends.” With benefits.
Kalroy
Dang! Born 70 years too soon. Back in my salad days, girls were too smart to fall for such shuck.
Things sometimes change once people move in together. At this age, however, parents need to trust their children to know what is best for them.
I feel like this move isn’t really as radical as the commenters here seem to fear. All of my apartment-mates this year are male, and I couldn’t be happier with the situation. I have four boys who are as suspicious of any gentleman callers I might have as my father could possibly wish. When we go to parties together, I’m walking home after midnight through city streets with a bunch of football players, not other girls my size. The domestic problems are over unwashed dishes, not passive-aggressive bull. I wouldn’t even consider living with girls.
And for all the sneers at the increasing friendship between men and women — sure, there are friendships with benefits. I don’t know anyone in one, however. I do know a lot of people who have wholly platonic wonderful friendships with people of another sex. I wish I had been allowed to room with my (male) best friend in the dorms.
It’s not as though any of these colleges are forcing co-ed roommates, and I really don’t think a slippery slope argument has any merit here at all. If you don’t want your daughter living with a boy, then don’t allow her to. It’s that simple. Dormcest is such a huge problem already that I’m sure very few people will want to risk living with a romantic possibility, and RAs are certainly going to argue against it.
Sorry to be so verbose, but honestly, I believe this to be blown up into far more of a crisis than it really is.
> Students are reluctant to get too close to someone who lives too close.
Yeah right.
> Dating someone in the same corridor is known as hallcest or dormcest.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that….
To play Devil’s advocate, it’s worth pointing out that cohabitation for roommates has been going on in the Boston area apartment sharing scene for decades, since it’s always ludicrously tight there, and it’s influenced the undergrads around there for a long time (the fraternities were letting out rooms to mixed gender rommates in the summer, again for decades), so this is hardly a big change. At least in the dorms the hallmates know when roommates aren’t just rommates, and so those who don’t want to be known as cohabiting, aren’t going to.
–Students are reluctant to get too close to someone who lives too close. Dating someone in the same corridor is known as hallcest or dormcest.
Uh-huh. But if once they’ve past that short phase of “dating” in college, they can move in together as roommates. and they do.
Notice it doesn’t say they don’t do it–merely are Reluctant. Just like dating coworkers–people are reluctant they say. They are reluctant right up until they are interested in someone, and then all of their “but I don’t date coworkers” statements fly out the window.
It’s a disaster. Incidence of date rape, sexual assualt, physical assault, and more and more domestic violence on campuses are occurring coincident with men and women living on the same floors, in the same dorms. Moving them even closer together exacerbates the problem more. And colleges have not a single clue how to stop it. Domestic violence is as common as binge drinking–for similar reasons.
“those who don’t want to be known as cohabitating”–not all women are savvy enough at 18 or 19 to understand this. Most young women have been told throughout their young lives that men and women are the same. They have no idea what your above statement would be true. they would assume no one would assume, so to speak.