<p>You’ve got to watch that dancing!! I went to a church-related high school because the public schools where I grew up weren’t very good. It was a no “pre-marital dancing” type of church. Guess what - two consecutive homecoming queens were “knocked up” and unable to crown their successors. Only then did the administration realize the benefits of a supervised all night dance instead of a short dinner and sending the kids off to find something else to do. If they are at a supervised function that they want to attend, that’s less time available to do “something else”.</p>
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<p>Well, that’s right about the same time barrons & I are talking about, woody. The Pill was first approved for contraceptive use in 1960 but it wasn’t widely marketed at first. It wasn’t even available to married women in all states until the Supreme Court decided Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, and it wasn’t legally available to unmarried women in all states until Eisenstadt v. Baird in 1972. A key moment for college women (and indirectly for college men) was when college and university health services adopted policies of prescribing the Pill to unmarried students; THAT’s when it became widely available on campus, and at schools like Michigan and Wisconsin that probably would have been around 1967 or 1968, and probably a bit later at some other schools. This was still pretty controversial stuff in many states. A lot of college women wouldn’t go their family doctors at home for prescriptions for the Pill, fearing parental disapproval and/or resistance from some more culturally conservative docs. So I still think it’s all tied up with university administrators’ responses to the youth rebellion of the late '60s. Women students wanted the Pill, in some places demanded the Pill, and university administrators caved, just as they caved on visiting and overnight stay rules and a bunch of other things.</p>
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<p>It’s hard to tell what you mean by “sleeping around.” Do you mean pre-marital sex? Do you mean brief encounters for sex without ongoing longer term relationships? </p>
<p>The way I felt about all this when I was in college in the late '70s is how I still feel about it for my own kids. I’m fine with pre-marital sex. I prefer it to be the type where the couple was in a relationship over time as opposed to one night stands and having many partners over a short period of time. My daughter’s partners, for example, have all been of at least a year in duration. I don’t consider that “sleeping around,” but rather that sexual intimacy is part of an ongoing relationship with an exclusive partner.</p>
<p>Also, I got married younger (age 20) than my daughters and so with more years before marriage, I would expect them to have more than one sexual partner in their lifetime.</p>
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<p>Yes Marian, and I think I can speak for all the middle-aged guys on CC in saying how appreciative we all were of our female classmates’ willingness to endure those hardships! :)</p>
<p>My college years were the same as soozievt’s (1975-79) and “staying over” was completely taken for granted. I can’t emphasize enough how ordinary it seemed or how little sense of transgression there was about it. But we knew it had been different for our predecessors up until quite recently. As others have said, the cultural norms changed very fast between the late 60s and the mid-70s. It was an interesting time to grow up.</p>
<p>^ Oops — a small misstatement in post #22. Apparently the dispensing of birth control on campus is STILL controversial in some quarters. Here’s a story describing a protest by Georgetown students in the Spring of 2010 against the University’s policy of not providing condoms or other forms of birth control on campus:</p>
<p>[Georgetown</a> Students Chain Themselves to Statue to Protest Reproductive Injustice | Women’s Rights | Change.org](<a href=“The World’s Platform for Change · Change.org”>The World’s Platform for Change · Change.org)</p>
<p>That’s because Georgetown is a Catholic school.</p>
<p>I doubt Georgetown students have any difficulty obtaining condoms, though. There’s a CVS on almost every corner in DC.</p>
<p>Here’s a pretty good article that captures what the public reaction was to college health services dispensing the Pill in 1965, when Brown became the first university to publicly acknowledge that its health service had prescribed the Pill to two unmarried but engaged students. That move prompted outraged editorials coast-to-coast, and a Gallup poll that year found three out of four Americans disapproved of prescribing the Pill to college students. </p>
<p>[</a>" + artTitle.replace(“-”,“”) + " - " + “The Brown Daily Herald” + " - " + “Features” + "](<a href=“http://www.browndailyherald.com/features/in-1965-brown-physician-sparked-furor-over-the-pill-1.1675089]”>http://www.browndailyherald.com/features/in-1965-brown-physician-sparked-furor-over-the-pill-1.1675089)</p>
<p>Things broke wide open by '67 or '68, however.</p>
<p>Hey OP</p>
<p>I went to school in the 80s
and the dorms were single sex and there was curfew
…no men in the womens dorms after a certain hour
and never allowed overnight (not that it didn’t happen–however it was pretty rare)</p>
<p>And all guys in womens dorms had to call from the front desk and escorted in/out. I dont know how it applied to the mens dorms–my guess is it was similar.</p>
<p>The only places I know of that were more wild in general would have been the frats on campus…and yet because they were university housing–I think they had the same rules</p>
<p>I think the newest sexual revolution move is gender neutral housing. As long as both parties agree men and women can be roommates at college.</p>
<p>[QSA</a> :: Gender-Neutral Housing](<a href=“http://www.coloradocollege.edu/students/QSA/gender-neutral-housing.html]QSA”>http://www.coloradocollege.edu/students/QSA/gender-neutral-housing.html)</p>
<p>My daughter reports that one of her friends is upset because the friend’s roommate has a boyfriend who is staying in the room all night 3-4 nights a week. She is upset because she didn’t sign up for a "triple. " It’s bad enough having a roommate, but multiplying the number of persons in a postage-stamp size room is awful. I completely agree that this is tacky and that I would have a fit if I was that roommate. It is just disrespectful, especially because there was no mention of the third “roommmate” when the decision was made to room together. </p>
<p>Another friend of my daughter had a roommate her freshman year who had a different guy stay over every weekend. They had loud and visible sex less than three feet from my friend. My daughter’s friend was not happy - not only because of the sex (which she really wasn’t interested in observing) but also because the roommate did not know these guys very well. She was actually afraid for her physical safety - that these guys would decide she was an available “freebie” because she happened to be in a bed within arm’s reach. </p>
<p>I would appreciate it if Student Affairs staff were able to facilitate discussions during orientation about room etiquette. Rude behavior is rude behavior, whatever the era. I think that the staff has a responsibility to help young people name rude behavior and stand up for themselves.</p>
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<p>Well, they have been doing it off-campus for decades (sometimes couples living together, sometimes mixed groups of friends sharing larger apartments). Why not allow it on campus?</p>
<p>The only problem is if you have to fill an empty space. Say that you have a suite in a dorm that’s occupied by four guys and two girls – by their choice. Then one of the guys takes a leave of absence or goes to study abroad. Student Housing has to fill his slot. This creates an awkward situation because it means putting people into the situation of living in close quarters with opposite-sex strangers – something that quite a lot of students would be uncomfortable with.</p>
<p>This applies off-campus, too. When he was at the University of Maryland, my son lived in an off-campus apartment complex with mostly 4-person apartments, where each resident had his own bedroom and his own lease. If someone moved out, the remaining residents had a couple of weeks to find a replacement, and if they didn’t, management would give the room to someone from the waiting list. In this apartment building, all apartments were required to be single-sex. Putting people from the waiting list in with opposite-sex strangers was just considered too awkward. On the other hand, in Ithaca, NY, where my daughter is a student at Cornell, landlords almost always allow mixed-gender groups to share apartments. But the leases are joint, and it’s the responsibility of the remaining roommates – not the landlord – to fill an empty space if someone moves out. It’s a very different situation.</p>
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<p>I can certainly understand Georgetown taking a principled stand against providing contraceptives based on the institution’s religious and moral convictions. But that does distinguish it from other elite colleges and universities. Just curious, do other prominent Catholic schools like Notre Dame, BC, and Holy Cross take a similar stand?</p>
<p>As for the “difficulty” of obtaining condoms, I guess there are different ways of interpreting that. Surveys show that 18- to 25-year-olds use condoms on average only 1 out of 4 times when engaging in sex, contributing to the rampant spread of sexually transmitted infections which, as we all know, can be quite horrible and even deadly. That’s why some colleges now distribute condoms free on campus and actively promote their use. The theory is kids are going to have sex anyway, and both the kids and the school will be better off if the kids are practicing “safe sex.” The assumption is the more readily available condoms are, the greater the likelihood that they’ll will be used when students do engage in sexual activity. On the flip side, if you need to go off-campus to the CVS to buy condoms, you’re less likely to have them and therefore less likely to use them; but that may not deter you from sexual activity. Certainly, any Georgetown student CAN take the initiative to go off-campus to buy condoms; but will they? I haven’t seen hard data to back up the assumption that making condoms more widely available will reduce the incidence of unprotected sex (and subsequently of STIs), but it seems like a reasonable assumption. </p>
<p>My own kids have never expressed any interest in going to Georgetown, but I guess my expectation is that they’re likely to be sexually active in college (as the vast majority of college students are). And if they are, as a parent I’d want them to be at a college where contraceptives, including condoms, are readily available.</p>
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<p>Then send them to Cornell. Not only can you buy condoms at the campus clinic, you can also buy sex toys and lubricants. </p>
<p>[Gannett:</a> Sexual Health Supplies](<a href=“http://www.gannett.cornell.edu/services/pharmacy/nonprescription/sexual_health.cfm]Gannett:”>http://www.gannett.cornell.edu/services/pharmacy/nonprescription/sexual_health.cfm) </p>
<p>Cornell has always been just a little bit weird. This is the same school where, until about 1980, men took their required swim test in the nude. (No, the women didn’t, and no, the pool was not open to the opposite sex during the men’s swim tests.) I went to Cornell during that era, and everyone thought this was perfectly normal.</p>
<p>^^^I’m laughing at that one, Marian. Didn’t they worry about “shrinkage”?</p>
<p>" I think that the staff has a responsibility to help young people name rude behavior and stand up for themselves."</p>
<p>Seems it would be common sense that if an extra person of any gender is staying in a shared room several nights a week, that is rude behavior. Assertiveness training is available at most college counseling centers, but passive students need to be proactive and utilize such services.</p>
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<p>Wasn’t that also the era when men swam in the YMCA pools in the nude (before it went coed)? Perhaps it wasn’t that weird during the time.</p>
<p>@bclintonk:</p>
<p>This article (from 2002, mind you) states that ND and HC do not provide BC: [Observer</a> Newspaper - News](<a href=“http://www.nd.edu/~observer/09202002/News/3.html]Observer”>http://www.nd.edu/~observer/09202002/News/3.html)</p>
<p>BC being marginally Catholic (or CiNO – Catholic in Name Only) is more likely to provide BC. No Catholic school is allowed to provide BC.</p>
<p>I think more schools have suite-type dorm rooms that have a central living area surrounded by four very small bedrooms. These are more conducive to sleepovers than a traditional double.</p>
<p>Haha. This is legend in our house. My first son freshman year–I found out his roommate had his gf sleeping over in the dorm room–I went NUTS. You won’t believe this, but I called the RA, the head of housing at his college, and even my clergyman–just to vent. I am a product of a college which had weekend afternoon visiting hours–with doors opened–for gentlemen visitors. Now my third has just begun college and I haven’t thought twice about it. You can’t fight city hall. In the end, you have to trust your kid.</p>
<p>Edit: I even called the boy’s dad, whom I had met at move-in. So embarrassing to think about now!!</p>