Theme Dorms on Campus

[ellis555]

after cruising through Jen's post on the
Black Miss America, i was reminded of a discussion that i've had on multiple occassions (sp?):
if affirmative action is justified by saying it improves the cultural atmosphere of campuses (i recently did a term paper on it, and this is a commonly given justification), how is it that those different (non-caucasian) cultures hole up in theme dorms. if i created a white dorm, i'd be killed. so...
1.what're your thoughts
2.anyone from the ACLU think i can sue my college on this?

ellis

[Fretful Porpentine]

I've never been on a college campus where there were all-minority dorms, so I can't really comment on this issue, but we had a similar controversy at UNC when the powers that be decided to make the last all-male dorm go coed. The residents protested, and got a LOT of bad press from the local media (much of it inaccurate, according to some friends of mine who know the guys involved). There are still all-female dorms on campus; the administration has made no effort to integrate THEM, and apparently doesn't intend to.

I've heard two rationales for this policy, both of which strike me as completely inane:

1) There are women who want to live in all-female dorms for safety reasons, while men presumably don't have to worry about being raped or harrassed by their female dorm-mates. (OK, but if coed dorms are so all-fired unsafe, why have them at all? Anyway, I thought the male=predator, female=victim stereotypes went out with corsets and bustles ...)

2) All-female dorms facilitate Female Bonding, which is warm, nurturing, and desirable. (Male bonding, consisting as it does of trying to sink quarters into Dixie cups of warm MGD, is by implication something we can do without.) As I recall, most of my bonding experiences on a freshman girls' hall were of the sort that leave scars for life; anybody who believes that eighteen-year-old girls are naturally warm and nurturing has never met one.

Anybody else have a take on this?