<p>Some 20 colleges allow coed rooms. Friendships not sexual intimacy tend to motivate students to sign up. "Janet Dewar and Matt Danzig met as college freshmen and hit it off so well they now are roommates. They share two on-campus rooms with only one doorway into the hall. That they don't share a gender doesn't give them a second thought." Article in the Christian Science Monitor looks at rooming policies at Wesleyan, Clark University, and Harvard.</p>
<p>Kids do it off-campus. Why not on-campus? As long as nobody's forcing them into it, I don't see why it would be objectionable. In some circumstances -- especially for gay male students -- it may even be the optimal arrangement.</p>
<p>I don't see anything wrong with it. I would do it. The number of guy friends of mine vastly outnumbers friends of mine that are girls. After a rooming disaster with several catty girls last summer, I would much rather room with one of my guy friends, homo- or hetero-sexual, than the girls I have roomed with.</p>
<p>I like the idea of gender neutral housing options. As well as for male/female friendships, it's especially good for gay/lesbian students who would feel more comfortable rooming with someone of the opposite sex and for gender-queer students who would feel uncomfortable being forced to choose male or female for housing and roommate purposes. There are also students, of course, who are in serious romantic relationships who will take advantage of co-ed rooms, but I know gay and lesbian couples who do that now.</p>
<p>i wish that more schools would allow this. Talking to two friends of mine whose schools do allow it (UNC does not), there are certain restrictions. At one friend's school you can only do it as a junior or senior, and at another's, the process is separate from the rest of housing and you are bound to it for 2 semesters (as in, they will not switch you out under any but the direst of circumstances). I think the latter hinders couples from choosing such an option.</p>
<p>DS lives off campus. His apartment has two guys and two girls. It's a GREAT living arrangement...they are all friends who happen to be in the same major. Personally I don't see this as an issue.</p>
<p>Sounds fine to me whether or not they are sexually involved. They are adults, anyway.</p>
<p>I'm a guy & my two roommates next year will be girls. We'll be living off-campus. We're all single, two of us are bisexual, one is straight. We're all good friends, and I can't see anything sexual happening.</p>
<p>It should be a good living situation... but honestly, anything will be better than living in the dorms again!</p>
<p>I see absolutely nothing wrong with the idea of rooming with someone of the opposite sex. Then again, my very best friend is a gay male, so I suppose I'm rather biased on the subject. </p>
<p>I don't see why there should be any objections to letting college-aged adults make their own decisions about living arrangements.</p>
<p>IF they're friends--no problem. If they sign up to live together b/c they're GF/BF, what if they decide to break up? Mid-semester and there's no where else to live? Huge problems.</p>
<p>It's a problem, but they're also adults. I think they deserve the respect to consider and choose whether rooming together would be a good idea. Many homosexual couples choose each other as dorm roommates now, and I think straight couples should be able to do the same.</p>
<p>Mommusic:</p>
<p>My daughter's school began offering limited gender-neutral/coed room options a couple of years ago. They are quite clear in the housing lottery handbook about the potential problems of BF/GF roommates.</p>
<p>*"You are strongly advised NOT to room with a significant other, unless married, to avoid problems during the year." *</p>
<p>It's already part of the conventional wisdom that "dormcest" or "hallcest" (hooking up with a neighbor you can't avoid later) is not a good idea. College kids aren't stupid.</p>
<p>The solution to a lot of housing problems is to provide more singles.</p>
<p>""You are strongly advised NOT to room with a significant other, unless married, to avoid problems during the year."</p>
<p>I know married people for whom this is a problem, too. ;)</p>
<p>I say...let kids do it...but if any problems arise...too bad. :)</p>
<p>my rule - never read the cs monitor</p>
<p>Personally, I don't wanna room with an 18 year old boy....most of them are not used to living alone and they are less neat than girl in general...not true for all boys though so don't jump on me..lol. But seriously, I wouldn't feel comfortable rooming with guys right now </p>
<p>p.s i have 4 brothers....</p>
<p>my rule - don't pay attention to someone who says something stupid like that, guitar girls.</p>
<p>I'm with you bsb. After all the talk about how smelly the boys dorm rooms are, I can't imagine wanting to share a room with one of them. Just peeking into the rooms at parents weekend was an eye opener. The girls rooms were mostly decorated and smelled good. The boys rooms for the most part were kinda stinky with unmade beds. I'm not saying that my daughter is much neater then my son but she would be a much more pleasant person to live with. Being friends with guys, marrying one after they've grown up, or sharing an apartment (with seperate bedrooms), is fine and dandy with me, but I can't see the appeal of sharing a dorm room with a guy.</p>
<p>I'd be fine with rooming with a guy, even in a single-room dorm, as long as I knew him reasonably well and knew that he did not want a relationship with me.</p>
<p>Besides, a system where males and females can room together seems so much... healthier, I guess, than one where they cannot. The more friends one has of the opposite sex, and the more contact the sexes have, the more they appreciate each other as full human beings instead of mysterious, stereotyped entities. </p>
<p>I don't think, even, that sexual tension necessarily precludes a platonic relationship. It's something that people can learn to deal with and get over it. People are going to be attracted to other people's bodies, but that in itself doesn't really mean anything anyways. If we're going to be wholly honest, even those who identify as straight might experience sexual tension on occasion with the same sex. Besides, you'd probably get more awkwardness between a lesbian girl randomly tossed in there and her roommate, than between a male and female roommate who chose each other. </p>
<p>In all, I feel the segregation of the sexes is a bit outdated. The sooner we can recognize that the sexes are, for most practical purposes, much the same and that individual variation is far greater than variation between males and females, the sooner we can have a truly egalitarian society.</p>