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.
