How can a 'Catholic' university allow coed. dorms.?

[Moscati]

My Baptist school had completely segregated housing when I lived in the dorms, and well-enforced rules about after hours fraternization. They have two co-ed dorms now. One is segregated by floors, and the other has a giant wall down the middle.

In my experience, the people who wanted to break the rules found ways to do it. I’ve heard of illicit trysts in rooms on Sunday mornings when most people were at church, on benches outside, in parked cars in the garages, in stairwells, on couches in the 24-hour library study areas, and, the old standby, at older students’ off-campus apartments. If my RA friends are to be believed, the advent of coed dorms just made the offenders easier to catch, because they didn’t go somewhere else.

 

[PaulinVA]

Could someone explain what is intrinsically evil about living on a dorm hallway with suites that contain either men or women?

I don’t get it. Is it different to have girls (or guys) in the next room as opposed to the next hallways? I would think learning to treat people of the opposite sex on your hallway with respect as people who can be friends would be a very important life lesson for Catholic young people to learn.

 

[neiacatholic]

It is because they believe that young men and women today are no different than animals and that they cannot control themselves. They believe that living in coed dorms that they have sex all the time.

Little do they recall that sex among teenagers and young adults has been happening long before Vatican II and even if you can imagine it – at colleges that were for men or women only.

They don’t understand that as young men and women who live in coed dorms they are just as capable of being civilized human beings as any one else.

And I am not sure but I think when these men and women graduate from college there are not too many towns that segregate men and women.

 

[Young_Thinker]

It is because they believe that young men and women today are no different than animals and that they cannot control themselves. They believe that living in coed dorms that they have sex all the time.

Little do they recall that sex among teenagers and young adults has been happening long before Vatican II and even if you can imagine it – at colleges that were for men or women only.

They don’t understand that as young men and women who live in coed dorms they are just as capable of being civilized human beings as any one else.

And I am not sure but I think when these men and women graduate from college there are not too many towns that segregate men and women.

I appreciate your response. Succintly, the conservative mindset(whether politically, socially, religiously, etc.) is really, at its core, a distrust of human nature.

 

[Young_Thinker]

Could someone explain what is intrinsically evil about living on a dorm hallway with suites that contain either men or women?

Well, for one thing, it reminds me of the Palace of Versailles in the Ancien Regime (a crowded place inhabited by frequently bored aristocrats with questionable morality); though that is probably a subjective idiosyncracy.

 

[michaeldaniels]

Because unfortunately, a lot of “Catholic” Universities aren’t very Catholic now-a-days…very sad…look at my beloved Notre Dame and the mess that Fr. Jenkins has created over there

Hello everyone. I hope that this right forum in which to ask this. I was merely wondering why an institution of higher learning that is officially Roman Catholic could provide coeducational housing to unmarried students? Personally, I feel that if a priest is at the head of such a school, he merits excommunication or, at the very least, “defrocking.” An example of such a university is Villanova, while there are a no. of Protestants which also have this phenomenon(e.g. Emory University, to my knowledge). I would be grateful for any opinions upon this, I believe, truly unfortunate ocurrence. It is utterly despicable.

 

[neiacatholic]

Please refresh my memory of where it says that college or dorms cannot be coed.

 

[michaeldaniels]

It is not necessary for it to “say it somewhere”…that is an environment conducive to sin…it is placing hormone filled young adults in a near occasion of sin at the very least…and gives way to possible scandal…and certainly is not befitting of an orthodox Catholic University

Please refresh my memory of where it says that college or dorms cannot be coed.

 

[neiacatholic]

So we should keep our children segregated at all times because – they are like animals and unable to restrain themselves from carnal forces.

Perhaps segregating children could lead to homosexuality — makes just as much sense as your point.

 

[PaulinVA]

It is not necessary for it to “say it somewhere”…that is an environment conducive to sin…it is placing hormone filled young adults in a near occasion of sin at the very least…and gives way to possible scandal…and certainly is not befitting of an orthodox Catholic University

Michael, the question is why do you think it’s conductive to sin? Why is it scandalous?

What would be your requirements? Separate dorm buildings? How far apart would they have to be?

 

[whatischarity]

The topic of this thread is outrage over the hypocrisy of “catholic morality” not being a factor in big dollar catholic higher education. Name your “poison” it’s a matter of these schools, even the “best” of them sinking into secular morality.

Seems it could also be a commentary on how the OP was rashly judging those in charge of the university by his opinion that coed dorms were known sources of wickedness that were being allowed on Catholic universities campuses regardless of their known inherent wickedness. The majority of the posts I have read contradict that supposition. It appears to me the OP may need to learn to be more kind in his thinking.

 

[whatischarity]

Hello everyone. I hope that this right forum in which to ask this. I was merely wondering why an institution of higher learning that is officially Roman Catholic could provide coeducational housing to unmarried students? Personally, I feel that if a priest is at the head of such a school, he merits excommunication or, at the very least, “defrocking.” An example of such a university is Villanova, while there are a no. of Protestants which also have this phenomenon(e.g. Emory University, to my knowledge). I would be grateful for any opinions upon this, I believe, truly unfortunate ocurrence. It is utterly despicable.

I have read the majority of responders on this thread who have written about their personal experiences in coed dorms that they are not inherently evil and would even suggest that they are indeed less of a source of temptation than segregated dorms. If the experiences of these individuals is representitive of the whole, could it be possible that the answer to your opening sentence is “The heads of the institutions of Roman Catholic universities have studied the situation and determined that, as strange at it appears on the surface, evidence shows that coeducational housing does not encourage promiscuity any more than segregated housing and in fact has multiple benefits in this area.”

Now I don’t have any empirical evidence one way or the other based on scientific sociologic studies, but then I am not calling for the defrocking and excommunication of priests on a public forum.

 

[Goth_Catholic]

It is not necessary for it to “say it somewhere”…that is an environment conducive to sin…it is placing hormone filled young adults in a near occasion of sin at the very least…and gives way to possible scandal…and certainly is not befitting of an orthodox Catholic University

snickers Yeah, all we do is have sex here. I have three guys in my bed right now because they live on the floor below me instead of in a separate dorm. Please, if an 18-25 year old college wants to have sex, they’re gonna have sex whether separate dorms or no separate dorms. We might as well have segregated colleges, although even then it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference, I have friends who went to all girl and all guy schools.

 

[Young_Thinker]

I appreciate your response. Succintly, the conservative mindset(whether politically, socially, religiously, etc.) is really, at its core, a distrust of human nature.

or, rather, a distrust of mankind.

 

[Young_Thinker]

I have read the majority of responders on this thread who have written about their personal experiences in coed dorms that they are not inherently evil and would even suggest that they are indeed less of a source of temptation than segregated dorms. If the experiences of these individuals is representitive of the whole, could it be possible that the answer to your opening sentence is “The heads of the institutions of Roman Catholic universities have studied the situation and determined that, as strange at it appears on the surface, evidence shows that coeducational housing does not encourage promiscuity any more than segregated housing and in fact has multiple benefits in this area.”

Now I don’t have any empirical evidence one way or the other based on scientific sociologic studies, but then I am not calling for the defrocking and excommunication of priests on a public forum.

Thank you.

 

[Bay_Sailor]

I went to Villanova back in the mid-70’when all the dorms were segregated (I lived I Stanford Hall)…
Visitation was completely prohibited anywhere except in the “lounges” in the dorms during certain limited times of the day…
and there was more “sleep overs” in the segregated VU dorms than any co-ed dorm I ever visited, at another college, during that period…
I know, I, and my roommate, had quite a few of our own “sleep overs” with women from the women’s dorms, or from Cabrini or Rosemont (both all girls schools back then) or Bryn Mawr…
It’s (sex) gonna happen and when people that age are told they are forbidden an activity, it just makes the illicit activity that much more exciting…
(i.e. the smell of pot smoke in the dorm hallways was the norm 24 hours a day)…
Segregated dorms are not the answer nor do they discourage trysts, they, in reality, promote promiscuity…
Just my opinion having been there, done that…