Coed rooming: What’s he doing here?

At a little after two in the afternoon, Elliot, my teammate and friend, strolls into my room to borrow some wallpaper putty for his new poster. He lounges in my chair as we talk about our day. Our conversation snowballs as we go from topic to topic. I suddenly realize that if I were still at my boarding school, The Hotchkiss School, as I was three months ago, this would have been a flagrant act of misconduct. I could have been sent to the disciplinary committee, had a letter sent home, and been left with a shameful and conspicuous red mark on my transcript for having someone of the opposite gender in my room with the door closed.

Was it actually that bad to have a male friend in my room? In college, he can come in anytime I let him, allowing him to potentially spend all his time in my room. My curious mind kept spitting out questions, new theories that seemed to directly oppose the strict code of conduct I had learned to accept at boarding school. What if he were my roommate? That actually might not be a bad idea.

Although 58 colleges including Brown, Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania currently offer coed housing, I believe it should be made available at all universities across the nation. Ever since the hippie and feminist movements of the 1960s led to the emergence of coed dorms, college residential living has been moving in the progressive direction. After Oberlin College offered the first gender-neutral dorms in 1970, other colleges followed and began to offer coed housing at a rapid rate.

If college is actually a place that prepares students for the real world, then it should allow its students to live with a person of the opposite gender. Colleges claim to be the training ground for life by offering a fountain of knowledge from which individual ideas and unique educations can flourish. Higher education also stresses involvement in one’s community and the ability to co-exist with a variety of people. Despite these efforts of assimilation, the one thing colleges fail to prepare students for is marriage. 

The majority of students eventually go on to build families by living with someone of the opposite gender. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center of Social and Demographic Changes, 30 percent of millennials consider having a successful marriage to be their most important life goal. Furthermore, 52 percent of millennials consider being a good parent is their most important life goal, an endeavor that I believe is most easily accomplished with a stable marriage.

While some may argue that one can achieve this preparation for marriage through dating in college, dating in college usually only exposes the glamorous side of a marriage. Living through the habitual ups and downs would help students better understand what it truly takes to successfully live with a person of the opposite gender.

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In an age where the perpetuity of marriage seems to be increasingly compromised, it is not too far of a stretch to think that this change in college residential situations could also decrease divorce rates and unhappy marriages. If people are exposed to all aspects of living with a person of the opposite gender, they would have more experience and thus be more prepared to live with another person, allowing them to make more educated decisions about embarking on marriage.

In addition to coed rooms preparing students for marriage, they also foster a more inclusive and understanding community. In fact, Oberlin College first decided to allow coed dorms in 1970 to promote a safer, more inclusive, and respectful environment for people of all sexual orientations. As Americans get married later and later (the average age of first marriage is 27 for women and 29 for men), marriage can oftentimes be the last thing on a college student’s mind. Moreover, some do not even believe in marriage, while others prefer to marry or cohabitate with someone of the same gender. 

Although some do not consider a conventional marriage to be a part of their future, honing the skills to live around a person different from oneself fosters a more understanding and open-minded individual. One would be hard-pressed to find an individual who would be against a more inclusive community.

The director of residential housing at Ohio University asserts that their experience with coed rooming has been “positive with no controversy.” Oberlin’s Dean of Women Rose Montague captures the epitome of my beliefs in her reflection that coed housing enables students to “grow as persons, not just academically.” I am optimistic that as colleges begin to recognize its merits, coed housing will continue to spread across the nation.

Emily Ito is a 2014 graduate of The Hotchkiss School who is now in the class of 2018 at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.