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Young_Thinker
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I suspected that but was unsure, since this concerns actual living.
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Shin
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Generally, if you receive federal money there are restrictions, though I do not know if they exist in regards to gender in a general way that would prevent doing away with co-ed. Perhaps for some funding, perhaps not for others.
However, it is quite possible to disregard them for a private college if you do not receive federal funds. Hillsdale College is an example of a college that refuses to take any government funding whatsoever, and so is not beholden to government restrictions that come with funding. However it is co-ed. Don’t know about the dorms, but generally co-ed.
With the money comes the temptation to give in, in matters of faith when the institution starts relying on the money. Mammon instead of God…
However, it is quite possible to disregard them for a private college if you do not receive federal funds. Hillsdale College is an example of a college that refuses to take any government funding whatsoever, and so is not beholden to government restrictions that come with funding. However it is co-ed. Don’t know about the dorms, but generally co-ed.
With the money comes the temptation to give in, in matters of faith when the institution starts relying on the money. Mammon instead of God…
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Young_Thinker
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Thank you. As for the schooling itself, from what I have read, in America, there are far more all-female colleges that are still existent than all-male ones(which might now be obselete).
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Young_Thinker
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curlycool89
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Really, seriously? I really doubt it. At my regular Catholic high school there was an AP English group. The girls outnumbered the guys. By a lot. I was in an “honours” grade 9 english class of about 30, and I believe there was 6 or 7 guys. At graduation, more girls than guys got the prestigious award at the local University (I got one too, it award wasn’t really that good, but it was hard to get. I ended up at a different university anyways).
Why do people live in dorms here? If my first 2 years are any indication, to drink, to party, and play drinking games (the drinking age is 18 where I am). I didn’t join in because frankly there’s more to life than partying. Except if they’re an Arts Major, then there won’t be more to their life past partying
(I’m sorry, I’m an engineering student. 
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ProVobis
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Perception goes a long way. In fact, adultery doesn’t have to be proven to grant a divorce. Adulterous behavior is sufficient in most cases.
Maybe the best rules to follow are these: (1) if you were a parent paying full tuition for your son or daughter, would you tolerate coed dorms? (2) if you had a girlfriend or boyfriend (or spouse) living in the coed dorm away from you, how would you feel?
Personally I would like to know the details of the living arrangements before I’d make any final judgments. Simply calling it a coed dorm means dittley squat.
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Miserys_Fence
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OK, then, I’ve had dozens of men that I personally know inside of my house, and haven’t had sex with them.
I lived in a co-ed dorm for several years with, I don’t know, maybe 100s of men? Do you think I would have had time to go to classes and graduate at that rate?
Just a bit of teasing, obviously. But the point is: this world consists of both MALE and FEMALE. Unless you live as a hermit, at some point or another you’re going to have to interact with members of the opposite sex, personally or professionally. We’d all better darn well learn to deal with each other.
Miz
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EasterJoy
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I didn’t do the research. The researchers filmed co-ed and single-sex high school classrooms and tallied up how much and what kind of (name removed by moderator)ut the students had. The young women, as a group, fared better in the single-sex setting. With some, it doesn’t matter, because we don’t care, while with some guys, they can’t speak an intelligible word in front of someone they are interested in. Those are factors that come into play at that age, though.* It is not discriminatory to recognize that and to have single-sex classrooms*.Really, seriously? I really doubt it. At my regular Catholic high school there was an AP English group. The girls outnumbered the guys. By a lot. I was in an “honours” grade 9 english class of about 30, and I believe there was 6 or 7 guys. At graduation, more girls than guys got the prestigious award at the local University (I got one too, it award wasn’t really that good, but it was hard to get. I ended up at a different university anyways).
Why do people live in dorms here? If my first 2 years are any indication, to drink, to party, and play drinking games (the drinking age is 18 where I am). I didn’t join in because frankly there’s more to life than partying. Except if they’re an Arts Major, then there won’t be more to their life past partying
I went to a public college. The science programs were excellent, but the college was one that had the bad luck to be identified in some national magazine as a top “party school”. My first dorm was a math and science dorm, and it had the worst GPA on campus: the hardest classes, but chosen by students who had been able to party like nuts during high school and still get good grades in math and science. Many got a shocking welcome to real life in their freshman year. I would never choose that dorm again. Not only was it very difficult to study there, but lots of people lived lives that made a soap opera look pale. It was sad. They were mostly miserable, especially the freshmen, ample demonstation of the truth that the Good Lord did not give us moral law to wreck our good time.
There was a “quiet” dorm that enforced quiet hours 24 hours a day, and that was the dorm with the hardest classes and the best grades. It had the advantage that everyone in it self-selected. People who did not want quiet living quarters did not choose to live there.
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pnewton
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Since you are familar with that term, then you should also know that when Shin said he has seen prayer effective, that you can not logical deny one’s personal experience. Besides, emotion is not a logical argument and can not beg a question.
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pnewton
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Young Thinker,
Might I suggest that you contact a moderator and ask them to move this if you do not not want it closed.
Might I suggest that you contact a moderator and ask them to move this if you do not not want it closed.
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EasterJoy
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Many many dorms, whether unisex or co-educational, experience members of the opposite sex being smuggled in (or out) for illicit trysts. With the co-ed dorms, there is usually little smuggling involved, unless the sleeping/bathroom areas are kept separate. To the best of my knowledge, on campuses with unisex dorms most of that goes on in the guys’ dorms, because women who’ve become accustomed to the entire dorm being a female-only locker room do not want strange males wandering their private living area. Couples choose the most welcoming venue, after all.OK, then, I’ve had dozens of men that I personally know inside of my house, and haven’t had sex with them.
I lived in a co-ed dorm for several years with, I don’t know, maybe 100s of men? Do you think I would have had time to go to classes and graduate at that rate?
Just a bit of teasing, obviously. But the point is: this world consists of both MALE and FEMALE. Unless you live as a hermit, at some point or another you’re going to have to interact with members of the opposite sex, personally or professionally. We’d all better darn well learn to deal with each other.
Miz
The question is this: knowing the real problem that exists with illicit sexual encounters taking place in college, especially in the early years when students are exploiting freedom from their parents, what responsibility does a Catholic university have in discouraging immoral sexual behavior in university-run housing? Do campuses with co-educational housing have more problems with that? If some don’t, what measures do they take?
I have found that learning to live with around guys as friends is a good thing. It is better for a woman who is away from her dad and/or brothers for the first time to have male friends other than her boyfriend than to get all her male attention from the guy who sees her as a romantic partner. In my experience, male friends often red-flag the sleeze-bags that will try to sweet-talk and flatter their female friends (not to mention intimidate the would-be sleeze-bags into reconsidering any funny ideas). Male friends can get very brotherly that way. Likewise, women give their male friends an education about how other women see them, giving much more accurate information than the young men’s male friends are likely to have. These can be some very valuable friendships.
This is best done, though, when there are co-ed common living areas for coursework, studying, eating and watching TV, but strictly-enforced separate areas for sleeping, changing, and bathing. In other words, lots of places for friends to meet and talk in public, but few opportunities to get enough privacy to get disrobed. That’s where the “brotherly” and “sisterly” thing can go right out the window very fast. People are only human beings and, with results both better and worse, we are really really human when we’re still that young.
I’d believe “notorious” stories about as much as I’d believe stories about the fish that got away. Maybe true, maybe not, but people have their reasons for exaggerating.
I don’t know of an academic major that has cornered the market on alcohol abuse or sexual indiscretion. Yes, there are differences–there are more Latter-Day Saints in dentistry than in trauma surgery, because of the difficulty of working family life into a trauma surgeon’s erratic work hours–but let’s just say that the idea that biologists in particular take a dry view of erotic behavior nearly made me spit my coffee on my keyboard. (Rationally animalistic? Do you know any biology majors?)
If you don’t have much first-hand knowledge of dorm life, IMHO you can count yourself fortunate. Living in such close quarters without a feeling of being at home was not one I would want to repeat. Cloistered life is hard enough in an actual cloister. Anybody living that close together ought to actually be a true community, with a rule and a truly common life. Outside the cloister, I found the arrangement fairly stressful…not all the way to prison conditions, but definitely travelling in that direction.
Speaking of cloisters, the Irish used to have monasteries that included both sexes and families as well. It can happen. It doesn’t happen all by itself, though. People need some boundaries to keep their sexual temptations in check.
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curlycool89
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By “research” do you mean it’s published in a well known peer-reviewed journal, or just a guy with a camera who made a documentary out of it? Was there a control group? Is the “experiment” repeatable within certain perimeters? In that case has the research been confirmed or is it just the one case?
When you’re dealing with human behaviour, you can pretty much call anything research. Free will and the fact that no 2 people really behave the exact same make it hard to quantify very much.
I think we call that “being socially awkward”. It tends to happen during those teenage years. The best way to get through it isn’t to segregate the sexes, but to have them interact (appropriately, of course) until they’re no longer awkward around each other.
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Young_Thinker
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Yes, I know a no. of undergraduates who are studying biology(and I myself am seriously interested in medicine), and some were certainly immature. I was just offering a possible theory about those in certain fields. As for the Irish monasteries, if there were really families there, then that is somewhat different. As for personal experience with dormitories(even ones with rooms for 1 person), I have basically avoided “like the plague!”
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Young_Thinker
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And let us not forget the issue of mixed-gendered ‘restrooms’ (without door-latches) at universities.
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Pug
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Do you have some research to say this? What if the real way numerous people get over being generically socially awkward is to get old enough (or for their peers to get old enough
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EasterJoy
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It was a long time ago that I saw it, so I would have to look it up…but yes, it was real peer-reviewed science. I could not tell you what the controls were, and I’m sure there have been more studies since. Besides, I’m a chemistby training, so the degree to which a sociologist can control variables is way below what I’m used to. I try not to be uncharitable about what conclusions a sociologist can draw. The more recent work, interpreted with both the recent and old data, would be what I’d want to find these days.
The point is that we go through biologically-based phases that we grow out of. Our brains and our way of interacting with the opposite sex are very different at the age of eight than they are at eighteen than they are at twenty-five. There are huge changes in the brain taking place in adolescence, and they aren’t entirely under the control of training. There are very powerful biochemicals in play. During that phase of brain development, a segregated learning environment has its advantages. It isn’t discriminatory or inherently bad.
What is “best” is probably best discerned on a case-by-case basis, depending on the student and the course material. In my experience, the problem is less pronounced in mathematics and chemistry, where self-expression isn’t all that great, but more pronounced in health class and gym class, where bodily differences are at the forefront, with those classes in which there are intermediate degrees of self-disclosure and personally-applicable private information coming in somewhere in between. And yes: eventually, even when the brain has weathered the initial assault of our hormones, it takes some experience to learn navigate interactions with the opposite sex appropriately, too. That is a learned skill. Some are “naturals”, but for most people, it doesn’t just happen.
My Catholic high school had the sexes separate for physical education and health, but not for other courses. Although having the sexes separate for English lit. and creative writing would probably have been profitable, too, I think what we had was a good compromise. I wouldn’t separate classrooms after high school.
Having said that: that we needed to have our dances and overnight senior retreats strictly chaperoned during the spring of our senior year (and we did need that) but would be expected live chastely with unrestricted access to each other’s bedrooms the next fall seems ludicrous to me. IMHO, providing co-educational dorms, especially for college freshmen, is not responsible unless there is true restriction of access between the sleeping and bathing areas for each sex. That is too much temptation (not to mention peer pressure) for the typical freshman to resist. Failing to resist that temptation can have immense moral, personal, and academic repercussions.
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curlycool89
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Well, I based it on the idea that social awkwardness is kind of like a phobia. It is irrational to say the least. Getting old enough to get over it works well too.Do you have some research to say this? What if the real way numerous people get over being generically socially awkward is to get old enough (or for their peers to get old enough
I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t even think of gym class. Now that I think about it, my grade 9 gym class was segregated into 3 “mini-classes” at the same time. Most of the time we did different activities, but sometimes came together for bigger ones like dancing (for some reason we had to learn dancing). Grade 10 was unsegregated.
In elementary school we were separate for sex-ed, and then together in high school. It was just as awkward for both situations
See, I don’t see that as good because women and men tend to think differently in those subjects. You get a totally different perspective into the novels or whatever you’re studying. If I was in an english class with all guys, we wouldn’t get that.
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Young_Thinker
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Thank you; I already did.
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Young_Thinker
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EasterJoy
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In college, I agree. In high school, I think there is a reticence in co-ed classes that isn’t as prevalent in single-sex classes. You don’t get as much of anyone’s perspectives when the students are shy to discuss things at all. But that does depend on the student and on the group, and there is a trade-off, either way.
The odd thing in this whole discussion is that, having five older brothers and having gone to a very small grade school with all boys in my class, I always thought myself more comfortable communicating with guys. I thought them so much more straight-forward. I was in my thirties or forties before I realized that I was more comfortable around people who communicate directly, rather than indirectly. That is not strictly a male-female difference.
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