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Health & Fitness

Co-ed dorm rooms: not a threat to students

Don't assume having your kids stay in a single sex dorm room will deter them from having sex or drinking. It won't.

Co-ed dorms where both male and female students live in the same buildings have existed for decades. However, in recent years, there has been a movement in many universities across the United States to allow male and female students to share rooms. This is enthusiastically referred to by advocates as gender neutral housing.  Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Brown, and Cornell are just a few of the universities to join this party. This movement towards co-ed rooms has been widely criticized by conservatives, religious groups, and university officials who argue that co-ed rooms promote increased sexual activity and increased consumption of alcohol.

Catholic University of America is a religious university that has decided to go in the other direction. By the year 2013, they will convert all 17 halls to single sex dorms. This means that each hall will only house students of a specific gender. So students of the opposite sex won’t even be in the same building.

I don’t believe that co-ed rooms promote sexual activity or consumption of alcohol any more than single sex rooms. I don’t believe single sex rooms will lower rates of sexual activity or alcohol consumption. If you want your son or daughter to stay in a same sex room, then that’s one thing. If you are paying their tuition, then you might be able to force them to live in a single sex room even if they don’t want to. But don’t make the mistake of assuming that placing young people in a single sex room will keep them from having sex or consuming alcohol. The university environment exposes young adults to many new experiences and challenges them to make adult decisions. You can bet that they will face decisions regarding alcohol and sex no matter who they are rooming with.

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It’s not that I’m in favor of random hooking up or binge drinking in dorms. I’m not. For the record, I am a baptized Christian who is a member of a small church in Elk Grove. I definitely do not advocate illicit sexual activity or sex before marriage. I am okay with alcohol consumption when you are legally of age and consume in moderation.  I just don’t think that having a single sex room is going to do anything to prevent young people from having sex or drinking alcohol.

Think about it. Living under the same roof as Mom and Dad doesn’t stop high school kids from having sex. Most single sex rooms do allow people of the opposite sex to spend the night. Plenty of university students invite their significant others (or hookups) to spend the night and nobody thinks anything of it. Unless the university absolutely does not allow people of the opposite sex to spend the night and threatens students who break the rules with expulsion or something, there really isn’t any deterrent to having someone of the opposite sex spend the night. I only know of religious universities that threaten consequences if someone of the opposite sex spends the night.

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If young adults want to have sex or drink alcohol, they’re going to find a way to do it. It really doesn’t matter if they are living with their parents or people of the same gender or not.

I think it an insult to assume that anybody who lives in a co-ed room or gender neutral housing is more prone to sexual activity or alcohol consumption. I don’t think that every single university student who lives in the same room with a person of the opposite sex is going to chug alcohol and have sex with their roommate. It also isn’t logical to assume that just because a young woman has a male roommate that she will have more sex with guys. There are many factors to this equation.

Being willing to live with the opposite sex doesn’t mean you are entirely bereft of reason or morality. The choices that you make regarding sex and alcohol will be directly related to how you were raised, what your friends are doing, how big a role religion plays in your life, and the role models that are in your life. In the end, you are who you are. You’re going to do what you’re doing to do. You’re going to make mistakes and then learn from them.

You can’t set restrictions on a young adult and expect that it will prevent them from doing something that you don’t want them to do.  Again, it’s totally fine if you want your kids to stay in a single sex dorm room when they go to college. Just don’t assume that this will deter them from having sex or drinking. It won’t.

If you really want to protect your kids, you simply need to talk to them and be realistic about expectations. Talking to a young adult about the risk of getting a sexually transmitted disease, the relation between STDs and alcohol consumption, and the dangers of drinking and driving is far more likely to have a positive effect than simply making them stay in a same sex room when they go to college.

Jacqueline Cheung is an Elk Grove resident and the Executive Director of Go Jade Solutions.

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