Hey @Fiona1997, I totally get that. I didn’t mind the single-gender dorms much myself, but the other rules were a bit stifling. From my point of view, it’s not necessary to punish the students who want to have sex or who want to have members of the opposite sex in their dorm anytime in order for the students who don’t want those things to also get the experience they’re looking for. Your ability to choose your lifestyle isn’t diminished by someone else being able to choose a different lifestyle, which I think is a better view than the one taken by certain people in the Notre Dame administration.
Also, I do think that the single-gender dorms could be handled better. Men’s dorms are more lenient with parties than women’s dorms, and women’s dorms more often have alarms on the side doors and force you to check in visitors on weekend nights (though not all do). When I was involved in student government at Notre Dame, I was on a committee that was trying to address these gender relations issues. They weren’t horribly severe, and I would still strongly recommend Notre Dame as I loved my four years there, but I do think that there are things to be fixed.
You might not want to hear this, but Notre Dame certainly has a strong hookup culture. True, “hooking up” means “making out” a little more often than it does at other schools, and “sex” a little less often, but there is definitely a hookup culture. At dorm parties, off campus parties, and the college bars (not to mention Hip Hop Night). It’s certainly not for everyone, and it’s not something you have to be involved in, as there are always tons of things going on for people of all different preferences (there are tons of people there who think like you), but I wouldn’t want you to be surprised by it when you get there. A lot of freshmen will go to dorm parties, drink cheap beer out of a keg, grind together in a dark sweaty room, and make out with people they don’t know. It’s something I wasn’t too into, but plenty of my friends did that (and plenty others didn’t). Just so you know.