Co-ed Dorms

It was recently announced that the Universityof Idahohas reversed its decision to allow co-ed dorm rooms. As reported on WorldNetDaily, Bryan Fischer of Idaho Values Alliance has commended University of Idaho President Steven Daley Laursen for the administration’s decision to abandon the “wrongheaded and poorly thought-through plan.”

Apparently, Laursen’s epiphany regarding the wrongheadedness of this plan occurred after the Idaho Values Alliance posted an article about the co-ed dorm proposal that ultimately “reached state lawmakers.” What this reveals is that political engagement works.

Unlike the University of Idaho, the University of Chicago is determined to move forward with its own wrongheaded scheme to permit co-ed dorm rooms. Initial reports consistently held that co-ed dorm rooms would be available only to sophomores, juniors, and seniors, but a recent Collegiate Times article revealed that this option “will also be available to first-year students, but on an individual basis.”

Sheeplike, administrators at the U. of C. are following the lead of other colleges and universities that have over the years changed their view of the relationship between colleges and their students. A mere fifty years ago, college administrations served in loco parentis; now they serve as hook-up facilitators.

In the decision to allow male and female students to co-habit without parental permission, university administrators reveal a number of their dubious underlying presuppositions:

• Sex differences are irrelevant.
• Modesty is irrelevant.
• Parental values, beliefs, and rights are irrelevant.
• Premarital sex is not their concern.
• Potential increased risk of sexual assault is not their concern.
• Likely increase in sexual activity is not their concern.
• Potential increased risk of sexually transmitted diseases or unwanted pregnancies are not their concerns.

No one who is even minimally conscious today could be naïve or hopeful enough to think that single-sex dorm rooms will prevent unmarried college students from engaging in sexual activity. Nonetheless, cultural institutions have both the capacity and responsibility to convey important, culture-shaping messages through their policies.

Our esteemed institutions of higher learning first abandoned sex-segregated dorms; then they abandoned sex-segregated floors; now they’re abandoning sex-segregated dorm rooms. Some schools even have co-ed bathrooms. These changes facilitate the deracination of a proper and true understanding of sex differences and sex roles and constitute yet one more step in the slow, cultural death march that threatens the psychological, physical, moral, and spiritual health of our children and the health of society-a march that must be opposed.

Parents: do not financially support any institution that facilitates cultural corrosion through its policies and practices. Do not allow prestige and the promise of future financial reward seduce you into sacrificing moral principles.