<p>As an option. Wonder how parents will take that?</p>
<p>As a student, I would LOVE that. I’m a girl who would love to live with a gay man!</p>
<p>Just do not believe the stereotype that they are all neat! Some of m best friends are gay slobs! :D</p>
<p>^I know! My gay friends are 50-50. Some are neat as can be, some are messy as hell</p>
<p>They’ve opened a gender-neutral hall at the college here this year. It seems to be working out very well, and has been quite eagerly embraced by students.</p>
<p>Barrons - From the perspective of a parent: Coed rooms for students who are determined to be celibate are not going to make them sexually active any more than single-gender rooms influence sexually active students to become celibate.</p>
<p>Three beers can change many plans.</p>
<p>barrons! you are hilarious. good point! 
PS…LOVE bowdoin here…in fact my elder son was admitted to Bowdoin and I bought an entire set of old Wedgwood plates that are 70 years old and show scenes of Bowdoin college when I thought he was attending…which was sort of nuts. </p>
<p>Not sure what Longfellow and Hawthorne would have thought of coed dorm rooms! Joshua Chamberlain would have not gone for this! I think Franklin Pierce might have approved.</p>
<p>I am going to sell my Bowdoin plates as soon as I determine that none of my best friends’ daughters are attending.</p>
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<p>Yup. And students can drink beer outside of their room as well as inside it. :)</p>
<p>Barrons, as a Bowdoin parent I have no issues with this decision. It’s been in the works for awhile, the students lobbied hard for it, and the process seemed thorough.</p>
<p>Why not?</p>
<p>Students live with opposite-sex roommates off campus, anyway. Why not on campus?</p>
<p>Mixed-gender suites with single-gender rooms would be nice, too, and perhaps less controversial. A lot of upperclassmen want to live with their friends, even if those friends don’t happen to all be of the same gender.</p>
<p>Pomona has mixed-gender suites. Son’s in one. </p>
<p>2 single-gender doubles with common entryway.</p>
<p>Barrons:</p>
<p>This option has been offered at other schools for several years now. I don’t think it’s been a big deal one way or the other.</p>
<p>I do think it’s desireable for a college to accommodate a range of preferences: coed floors and single-sex floors, coed baths and single-sex baths, etc. I don’t think it’s ideal for a college to force all students into the latest PC-approved living situations and not allow for differences in religious and cultural preferences.</p>
<p>I think coed is a fine idea, provided it’s not coed for random roommates, personally.</p>
<p>“I think coed is a fine idea, provided it’s not coed for random roommates, personally.”</p>
<p>Perfect point, F&M has coed suites and apartments but you choose to live with people you already know, getting stuck with someone of the opposite gender you don’t know would not be appropriate. I remember is was so funny my first day moving in as a freshman my dad looked next door and said “There is a boy living next to you!” And I said “Yea dad, welcome to the 21st century” We don’t even have single-sex halls anywhere I don’t think.</p>
<p>These are coed dorm ROOMS–not suites with separate rooms. Big jump from coed suites. </p>
<p>IDad-name one random selection coed by room. Can it work–sure but it can also backfire with some very bad results.</p>
<p>I didn’t say anything about random selection. I’ve never heard of random selection co-ed rooms. I don’t know of a mainstream college that is doing that.</p>
<p>These are all for students who apply to live together and romatically-connected students are strongly discourage/denied. It’s really a gay guy/girl option for the most part. It’s also connected with offering options for transgendered students.</p>
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<p>This has been happening at my school (Wesleyan) for a while. After freshmen year, you are allowed to chose who you live with regardless of gender. Most non-freshmen don’t have to live in one-room singles, but some do, and some chose to live with friends of the opposite sex. I’ve never heard of it being a problem.</p>
<p>Note, these aren’t random assignments. I know of one couple that did it, but that’s generally frowned upon in general students culture (because it’s a stupid idea), and the school discourages it. Mostly its transgender students or some combination with a gay student, with the occasional platonic friends combo (and all those I know of did, indeed, stay platonic).</p>
<p>Many upperclassmen apartments and houses I know of are mixed gender, though obviously no one is sharing a room there.</p>
<p>Reed has mixed sex rooms now, too. I was surprised at the mixed sex halls when my son showed up as a freshman. It’s not that I didn’t know about it; it was just so different from my experience that it was a bit startling at first!</p>
<p>My son says that everyone knows that rooming with your bf/gf is a recipe for disaster, so people aren’t really jumping to do that. Besides, the upper classmen mostly have singles, so co-ed rooms are for the freshmen who request them.</p>
<p>I think its pretty cool.</p>