Blog #16: Hey Dad, Can I Have A Boy In My Room?

Alright, I know my title could have had a boy asking a mom but I tend to remember TV shows depicting the fathers as being a tad overprotective of their “little girls” when it came to their first date. Well, now parents have can one more thing to worry about when little Jonny and Sally go off to college, should my child have a roommate of the opposite sex?

The Associated Press is reporting that Columbia University will begin allowing men and women to live the same dorm room. Columbia University has traditionally been a more liberal leaning institution so this arrangement does not seem to bother many within the student body. One male student responded, “Yes, absolutely” when asked if he would consider living with a girl that was his friend. He repeated that response when asked if he would live with a female that wasn’t a friend. Similar answers were given by female students when asked the question with regards to male roommates.

The main force for this new dorm life is to make gays and lesbians “feel more comfortable” according to the reporter. The reporter did ask a gay male student his thoughts and he said, “I would feel more comfortable living with my girl friends then a my guy friends”.
Not all student’s agree with the change of policy on dorm living. Sada Ruffin commented, “I think allowing coed roommates you (Columbia) is condoning a certain behavior”. The only exception to the new gender neutral building is incoming freshman.

Columbia is not the first college or university to offer gender neutral housing. There are roughly thirty Higher Ed campuses that provide this type of living ,with Harvard allowing it if the student identifies themselves as transgender.

A question to my fellow bloggers:

1) Would it bother you if your son/daughter asked to live in gender neutral room with the opposite sex?

An ending thought:

1) Nowhere in the piece did the reporter even ask homosexuals IF they felt uncomfortable on the Columbian campus so I wonder if this isn’t a move by some campus to bring enrollments up.

2) Since the student is legally an adult is it up to the college to determine who they can and cannot live with it? I could see the parents stating their opinion if they are paying the tuition and rightfully so.

Blog #15: Express yourself in Oregon...well, not just yet.

Does your school enforce a dress code on you? Maybe it is business attire or maybe business causal or maybe just plain causal on jeans day. Whichever it is it is an issue that has a long history in the state of Oregon. Recently, in a USA Today article, House Speaker Dave Hunt, D-Gladstone, said he will push to "allow teachers to have the same religious free exercise rights as every other Oregonian" when legislators meet in February.


The issue at hand is a 1923 law that was put in place to keep Catholics from attending public school. The law was taken to the courts in 1986 and upheld by the Oregon Supreme Court. The ban outlaws the wearing of religious clothing or “garb”.

There are many interesting points to consider to this story. The first one is that the law is still in place and only 3 states of such bans on the books. Is your state one of them? The second item that caught my attention is that, the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, which has long supported the ban, said the Legislature should not end it without enacting additional protections for Oregon students, according to the article. In a related issue the ACLU is fighting for the rights of students in Florida that were dismissed from school for wearing, “Islam is the Devil” t-shirts to class. The ACLU issued a statement that it is their right under the Bill of Rights and their freedom of speech, to wear such clothing. The Florida school district disagrees. We will see how that case plays out.

The last item that I found interesting in the Oregon case is that the “Oregon Education Association has not taken a position on the issue”, a spokeswoman said.

So what are your thoughts? If you were a teacher in Oregon which way would you push for? A ban on wearing religious clothing or no ban but I would assume then that teachers would have to follow some dress code. The dress code could be one that the students follow as many of you have said are in place at your schools OR it could be a professional contract stating what business causal is. I know from a previous blog by a classmate that some younger teachers don’t understand what business casual is but for the sake of agreement let us say they do.

I feel your employer has some rights to enforce a dress code on the staff and the students. I worked at a refinery and we had to wear safety boots, hard hats, and jeans or we wouldn’t have a job. It was a requirement that our company put in place. Why is it different in education? The district hires you to be a professional so why shouldn’t they be able to set the guidelines as to what they THINK a professional is? In this story I guess the people of Oregon are still trying to figure that out.