<p>My daughter will likely be attending a Catholic university next year. She is happy with nearly every aspect of the school, but is concerned that the strict enforcement of opposite gender visitation hours along with single sex dorm life will be too restrictive and difficult to get used to. Her siblings all attended non-Catholic colleges and lived on co-ed floors, where they enjoyed four years of responsible self-governance. </p>
<p>For those of you whose children attended (or attend) Catholic colleges, did they find it difficult to cope with the visitation rules and/or the segregated dorms? Or was it something that they adjusted to quickly and didnt really affect their day-to-day life on campus?</p>
<p>I think catholic colleges vary and some are more conservative than others.</p>
<p>My D attends a jesuit university. Dorms are not segregated, her freshman dorm was segregated by floor and others are segregated by wing. So, within the dorm they can move around without any restrictions. For overnight guests they were restricted to the same gender but they got around that rule fairly easy.</p>
<p>Sophomore dorms do not have segregation (by room only), most are apartment style, some do require you check in your guests. D’ next door neighbors are two boys.</p>
<p>I can not speak for other universities but, at least for this one, the information was in their web site explained very clearly.</p>
<p>DD also attended a Jesuit school. She didn’t find any restrictions to be a problem. Her dorms were all coed (women on one floor…or wing). </p>
<p>DS went to a large urban university. His dorm was coed…women on one side of the floor, men on the other…BUT the restrictions on overnight guests were MUCH more restrictive than at DD’s school.</p>
<p>Both of our kids were actually happy with the restrictions on visitors. Neither was particularly thrilled with the prospect of a roommate with a frequent “guest” staying overnight. Both had friends who had had to leave their dorm rooms often because of inconsiderate roommates who thought it was OK to sleep together in the dorm room night after night after night.</p>
<p>My DD attends a jesuit school. Opposite sex guests are allowed until a certain hour (very reasonable, 3 AM on weekends). I agree that kids who pay for dorm rooms should not get sexiled. To tell kids, work it out with your roommate, doesnt always work, and the schools are abdicating their responsilbitilities.</p>
<p>They restrictions are very reasonable. At the end of the day, it ends up being roomates talking to eachother about privacy and space. Every school is different, but guys having to leave girls room as 11:00pm weeknights and 3:00 am on weekends ends up being remarkably survivable.</p>
<p>D’s dorm is segregated by wing with a shared lounge in the middle. Inter visitation is pretty liberal. Boys out by 2:00am. Getting used to it wasn’t difficult at all as our home did not have 24 hour intervisitation for opposite sex guests.</p>
<p>Our S is a freshman at a Jesuit University and his dorm is segregated by room. There are options for same sex floors/wings but most of the freshman dorms are mixed. Restrictions for visitors exist but are easy to circumvent. As stated by other posters, it varies by school.</p>
<p>S’s college had female and male dorms and parietals. This university has been this way since it went co-ed in 1972. I can’t see it ever changing. The kids grumble and moan a bit, but surveys of students and graduates consistently say that overall they prefer it. There are many advantages.</p>
<p>Back in the day, I lived in an all girls dorm the first year and then the next year was in a floor by floor co-ed dorm. I must say I preferred the girls dorm. It was more liberating to walk around in a robe in the hallways with your hair in a towel and no make-up on and not have to worry about looking presentable all of the time. I think it limited the number of “sleep-over” issues because the guys became obvious ( and the bathrooms were down the hall). I would be so upset if one of my kids had to deal with a room mate’s girlfriend/boyfriend sleeping over, especially if I was sending them to a Catholic school.</p>
<p>S is at a Jesuit school. I don’t know what the “rules” are or whether there even are any, but they don’t seem to be much enforced. S’s roommate often has his girlfriend overnight, and another student (commuter) also sleeps in their room from time to time, so a two-person room is sometimes hosting 4 people. S got sexiled one night and found a couch in one of the girl’s suites to bunk down on.</p>
<p>My sons are in male dorms with strict, though reasonable (2 am weekends), visitation rules. As srystress noted, the students tend to complain about these rules, but actually find them a relief – sometimes it’s hard for non-assertive students to get rid of their guests, and these rules give them someone else to blame for sending the guys (or girls) away so that they can go to sleep. There are 24 hour visitation lounges in each dorm for those who cannot bear to cut off intense scholarly discussions when visiting hours end. And, of course, determined students will find a way to break the rules, though the punishments are non-trivial for those who are caught. </p>
<p>My sense is that the students who would really have problems with these visitation rules self-select out of this university and enroll elsewhere.</p>
<p>Thank you everyone! This has been very helpful. The visitation hours do sound “remarkably survivable,” as glido put it. Over the past year, we have visited Catholic universities with a range of rules, from one with coed dorms and no visitation hours to another with strict visitation rules and single-sex dorms with sign in/sign out requirements. My daughter’s school leans toward the stricter side; however, I think she’ll adjust without any difficulty and will come to appreciate the benefits that claremarie and others pointed out.</p>
<p>Both my kids went to catholic colleges, with dorms that were co-ed by floor and visitation hours. I think you appreciate it most when your roommate has a girlfriend/boyfriend. My son’s catholic school actually has a freshmen curfew for the first month of school. On weeknights, they had to be back on the floor by 11pm. The R.A. actually had to take attendance. I think it helped them all get to know each other better, but son complained that he couldn’t study after 11pm, as the noise increased dramatically.</p>
<p>My kids both attended Jesuit colleges (different ones). Their dorms were either coed by room or by floor, depending on the configuration of the building. There were no visiting restrictions at either school. They each worked out any concerns with their roommates/suitemates. </p>
<p>I attended a Catholic university in the 70s. The school had only gone coed the year before I started. The dorms were all coed by floor and there were no curfews or restrictions on visiting back then.</p>
<p>Steve, I’m not exactly concerned that she will be missing something. It’s just that dorm life at, let’s say, Grinnell or Carleton or Beloit would be a different experience from dorm life at Marquette or Notre Dame or St. Thomas. I’ve learned about dorm life at the former schools through my older kids, but have little experience with the more restrictive Catholic schools, so I was looking for some feedback.</p>
<p>As I see it, there are pros and cons to both set-ups. For some young people, any kind of restriction is too much, and they want the freedom to come and go at will without watching the clock (and they are responsible enough to handle that freedom). Also, some believe that segregating the sexes hampers the development of genuinely comfortable and platonic friendships between male and female students. On the other hand, I recognize the advantages of same-sex housing and visitation hours that other posters have kindly shared. I don’t feel that one option is better than the other. I just want a good fit for my daughter and for her to have some sense of what residential life will be like in her chosen school.</p>