UW Madison, as far as I can remember: first year you got luck of the draw if you didn’t know anyone going there, otherwise they’d pretty much put you with your chosen roomie as long as both of you selected each other. No requirement to live on campus, even for freshmen - in fact, if you applied late you often had to take off-campus housing (there were private ‘dorms’ that were usually the first choice for situations like this). The on-campus dorms didn’t have suites - you were stuck in the same room with one other person, unless you were lucky enough to get a single room.
Icarus. I hear you. I think that is a relevant issue. Despite my personal beliefs that an adult child’s sex life is none of the parents’ business, I do suppose if they are footing the bills, then I can understand why they think they should have some say.
I put myself through college, pretty much because my parents’ policy was “our money-our rules.” That was just fine and dandy, but I’d had enough of being controlled, so I made the choice to pay my own way so they could just STFU about my living arrangements and other choices.
Sex life does not equal living arrangements. My child’s sex life doesn’t cost me any money (generally), their living arrangements do.
You sound like you took responsibility for your own life - I like that! I’ll bet that was your parents goal all along. But that is only one scenario in the spectrum of scenarios that exist between parents and their college going kids.
Actually, my parents are mormons so they thought I should get married and start making babies, pretty much asap, and couldn’t understand why I or anyone else should bother wasting money on a college degree for a woman.
Right. That is only one scenario in the spectrum of scenarios that could exist between parents and their college age kids.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear in the OP text, but if you go to the link, it is clear that it is indeed roommates I was talking about, and how things were set up in the Harrad Experiment. It’s only a short step from coed buildings or floors, but a significant one, IMHO.
“Hell no, she should be fooling around and experimenting with casual sex not committing herself to one guy.”
This was pretty much my freshman experience in the US in 1975. No restrictions on visiting, fraternizing, coupling (other than common courtesy to your roommate), no curfews.
Oh I understood it just fine, yet we still have folks posting about how their halls were coed back in the day :smack:
And Dogzilla, it’s more queer-friendly in that just like they wouldn’t force a woman/man to room with a man/woman, they shouldn’t force a gay man/woman to live with another man/woman. I hope I wrote that right.
Although AFAIK most of these programs still assign gender-matched roommates for the first year.
Interesting. My experience was only 10 years earlier, in Missouri, and a world apart.
Well, remember that we’re speculating that this is the case; Rutgers hasn’t said so.
But, I think much like the purpose of same gendered rooms in the first place, mixed gender rooms in our era of open orientation may reduce the amount of “fraternizing” for those students who don’t *want *fraternizing with their roommate. (Honestly, some people really are there for the classes!) For a homosexual person, a same gendered roommate could be just as much a stomach churning, boundary testing, distraction producing dramafest as a heterosexual in a mixed gender room. The angst of one sided attractions, the fear of making a fool of yourself, the anguish, generally, of young inexperienced people figuring out relationships in the sudden freedom of college…and homosexual men and women have had to deal with that forever, sometimes finding themselves attracted to their roommate, yet knowing what a very bad idea it would be to pursue it.
Not to mention, of course, the fear that you’ll end up with a homophobic roommate who is afraid you’re hitting on him when you ask him to pass the ketchup and treats you like dirt as a result.
It’s nice that they can have the option of choosing a roommate for whom romantic attraction or tense relations based on homophobia is just not going to happen - just as heterosexuals have enjoyed for years in single sex rooms. That’s what makes it more gay friendly.
Thanks, WhyNot. I hadn’t thought of this angle and it makes sense.
I think they came pretty close to saying so:
Where I went to school, it was only the freshmen who were assigned at random. After that, you could pick your own room, and if you picked a double, you picked your roommate. (More precisely, the two of you picked the room together.)
It worked by seniority, then by random draw. So seniors, then juniors, then sophomores. Within each class everybody drew a playing card from a deck to determine the order.
Our dorm was an old building with many different kinds of rooms, so there definitely was an advantage to having an early pick.
My college apparently did the same thing. I didn’t have any choice with my first roommate. In fact, at the time, the dorms were full and so I lived in a hotel (paid by the school) for a couple weeks until there was room for me. And even then I wound up trading with someone else so that I would have a decent roommate.
My second year, I was allowed to choose a roommate, but didn’t, as I wanted into the best dorm, and there was only one spot left. That’s when I wound up with the roommate who started his own church, of which there were two members. You know, the depressed guy who believed that he would go to hell for watching anything magical, supernatural, or even fantastical on TV.
Unfortunately, that was when I lost my scholarship, so I never got to use my knew knowledge that getting random roommates sucks.
Hehe I remember my Sophomore year when I got into the good dorm, that happened to have coed floors, but not rooms(at least not officially).
About three weeks in the cold harsh reality slaps you in the face that all those hot babes with their tits half out at the parties, look like crap when they wear ratty PJs, and don’t bother with a shower.