When the Panty Raid Involves Just Crossing the Room

What happened to the good ol' days of college guys sneaking past monitors into the female dorms for pranks or illicit interludes? Now some colleges not only stick men and women in the same dorm together, but the same rooms. Larry Gordon has the Los Angeles Times article. He starts off with Pitzer College sophomores Kayla Eland, female, and Lindon Pronto, male, who are sharing a room. Neither is homosexual and they’re not a couple.

Eland, a biology major who hopes to become a doctor, said that a roommate's personality and study habits are more important than gender.

Not really - not when you are sharing a room. People like this are in denial of human nature, part of the mistaken mentality that there really isn't much difference between males and females.

"This might not be right for everyone," she said of sharing the small, cinder block-walled room with a man. "But I think it's important to have the right to choose where you want to live, how you want to live and who you want to live with."

I'm all for freedom of association. But to me, that freedom of association includes my freedom not to subsidize this in state universities or other taxpayer funding, or to pay for it in my donations, or my own child's educational expenses.

Pronto, an environmental studies major who works each summer as a forest firefighter, agreed. Apart from remembering to lower the toilet seat, he said, living with a woman friend is not much different from rooming with a man. "As far as I'm concerned, a roommate is a roommate," he said.

What’s he going to say, really – is he going to tell a newspaper reporter (and thus her and the world) that he'd "hit it" if given the chance? If he is a heterosexual and normal male, he's attracted to her on some level, unless she is highly unattractive.

[The best after the jump - keep reading.]

In the 1970s, many U.S. colleges moved from having only single-sex dormitories to providing coed residence halls, with male and female students typically housed on alternating floors or wings. Then came coed hallways and bathrooms, further shocking traditionalists. Now, some colleges allow undergraduates of opposite sexes to share a room.

This is a good example of incrementalism. If you go back to the initial moves, I'm sure you'll find justifications such as "Sure, they'll be in the same building. But they won't be on the same floor." Then you know it was "Sure, they'll be on the same floor, but they won't be in the same rooms."

Pitzer, which began its program in the fall of 2008, is among about 50 U.S. schools with the housing choice, according to Jeffrey Chang, who co-founded the National Student Genderblind Campaign in 2006 to encourage gender-mixed rooms.

Hmmmmm. If you had free time on your hands, isn't that what you’d do with your time and energy? Let's see... save the rainforest... register voters... ah, yes... Genderblindness! I wonder why Chang would bother? He's not genderblind, as the article reveals.

Participating schools include UC Riverside, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Cornell, Dartmouth, Sarah Lawrence, Haverford, Wesleyan and the University of Michigan.

I would have included the full list if the article provided it.

College officials say the movement began mainly as a way to accommodate gay, bisexual and transgender students who may feel more comfortable living with a member of the opposite sex.

Yes, and it didn't stop there, did it? There’s a lesson in that.

Most schools say they discourage couples from participating, citing emotional and logistical problems of breakups.

That's generally a good idea for unmarried couples, dorm or not. Don't shack up.

Officials say most heterosexuals in the programs are platonic friends.

With our without benefits? We can't know for sure.

"College students are adults," said Chang, who is gay and is now a law student at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "They have every single right to choose the person they feel most comfortable living with."

They sure do, Mr. Chang, as long as it is on their own dime. Adults are responsible for their own expenses.

Harvey Mudd College, next to Pitzer in the Claremont Colleges, began gender-neutral housing last fall mainly as an option for gay and transgender students, said Guy Gerbick, dean of residential life…"If we are going into a post-gender world, then the regulation of private behavior is just not practical," he said.

Post-gender world? What does he mean by that? The denial of male and female? Yes, I believe in the "gender binary". The rare exception in which someone is born with genetic or genital abnormalities does not negate the fact that there are generally male human beings and female human beings – and no matter how much surgery or hormones or makeup someone uses, a male doesn't change to a female – rather, a he becomes a man disfigured by his own choosing.

Pitzer housing applications ask whether students prefer a roommate to be woman, man, "other," or have no preference.

"Other"? What if the school can’t find an "other" that year?

Getting back to Eland and Pronto...

The pair seem to have a warm brotherly-sisterly friendship and, while they try to be respectful, they say they are not inhibited about being in underwear or even nude while changing clothes in the room.

I'm pretty sure I never changed in front of my sister once I could change myself, and vice-versa.

They insist their living situation does not interfere with romantic relationships with other people.

I would not take a woman seriously as a long term romantic interest if she was sharing a room with a guy. Something could be wrong with the thinking of a man who would.

Yeah, medical and emergency personnel, artists, actors, and others may experience nudity in intimate situations in their professions and have to concentrate on their work. But we're not talking about that. We're talking about highly hormonal people alone in a room in which they sleep and study. Supposedly "everyone" in college is "hooking up" these days, but that's not what is going on here? Whether or not it is, I don't think this is healthy for the relationship between the sexes. It trivializes the differences between them and it disrespects modesty. Men and women should have their own spaces.

I wonder how long this will be voluntary? I would think the radical feminists of the type that think all men are predators would have prevented it from going this far if they could, so perhaps even they won't be able to prevent this from becoming mandatory some day as part of the "diversity of the college experience".