<p>[Tufts</a> students calling new dorm sex rule ‘unenforceable’ - Medford - Your Town - Boston.com](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/medford/2009/09/tufts_students_calling_new_sex.html?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed4]Tufts”>http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/medford/2009/09/tufts_students_calling_new_sex.html?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed4)</p>
<p>Money quote: “I think it’s more of a personal decision between roommates.” I am with that.</p>
<p>Yes, I saw this in this morning’s Boston Herald.
Not sure why it’s worthy of so much news coverage, unless it’s been a really slow news cycle. It seems obvious that mature, considerate, well-adjusted people would not be having sex with their roommates in the room. The only reason for making such a rule was presumably that last year some students didn’t fit the above description, and no roommate should have to choose between standing uncomfortably silent or risking the potential social hassle of objecting and making an “issue” of it with a roommate who obviously doesn’t know better. The “spectator” roommate shouldn’t be burdened with having to object to something that is so obviously objectionable and inappropriate.</p>
<p>Are you suggesting that at Dartmouth it’s perfectly acceptable to have sex with one’s boyfriend/girlfriend in front of one’s roommate? I would hope not.</p>
<p>Those who are even passingly familiar with my comments on this board will know that while I’m generally tolerant of everyone, I do exhibit one extreme form of bigotry, and that’s Yolanda Kingism, where you judge people negatively for being Yolanda King, and correspondingly regard the organizations that they head (the Office of Residential Life and Learning) as a force for evil. </p>
<p>I have warned matriculating students that the one thing to really watch out for here at Tufts is the capricious, sadistic, soul-crushing arm of ResLife and Yolanda King.
Clearly I was too easy on her. I see now that I underestimated the magnitude of her malign influence. I thought her sinister machinations could only affect students actually at Tufts. Today, she has shown us all that she is capable of getting Tufts negative press coverage NATIONWIDE, not only inviting ridicule from all quarters, but also raising the prospect of having other universities repeat this tragi-comic policy. </p>
<p>One must wonder: does she really imagine that Tufts students are so socially inept and unprepared to act as adults that they are incapable of working these things out between themselves? Or has she purposefully embarked upon a campaign to belittle and humiliate us? Frankly, I hope it’s the latter. While having a highly-placed official at your own university consciously attempt to ruin the lives and reputations of its students may seem bad, we’ve been putting up with this sort of behavior from her for quite a while (perhaps even the beginning of time, if she is indeed, as I suspect, an actual incarnation of Satan himself, rather than simply one of his agents). However, if she has gotten it into her head that it is now her job to regulate the sex lives and interpersonal communication skills of students, I fear the worst. Will she next regulate how students speak to each other? Set policies for what sorts of conversations are prohibited, and which conversations are mandatory? Perhaps, in the all-invasive cause of being “responsive to student concerns”, she could take the initiative to monitor our rooms on closed-circuit TV? That way, if she sees us relating to our roommates in a way she doesn’t approve of, she won’t have to mess around with forms or paperwork or complaints, she can just flood our rooms with tear gas - as a first warning, of course; particularly bad offenders get a neurotoxin.</p>
<p>This is not, as you may have guessed, the first time Yolanda King has gone out of her way to make life worse for the Tufts community. In fact, it’s not even the first time this month: she’s already made student life more perilous by discouraging dangerously intoxicated people from calling emergency medical services, and put unnecessary and unwanted restrictions on who you can bring to your dorm. Off to a great start!</p>
<p>One might ask “why in the world hasn’t anyone fired her yet?” Great question. She’s a gay black woman, and firing her would be a public relations nightmare. After all, it would just be terrible if a scathingly negative story about Tufts came out, and got picked up nationwide by major cable news channels. . .
. . . oh wait.</p>
<p>^^I hope I’m not reading too much into this, but it seems that you don’t like Ms. King.</p>
<p>Snarf—I hadn’t noticed any previous comments from you re Ms. King and don’t know anything about her or her policies, but I have been very impressed with your thoughts on a panoply of issues and therefore am inclined to take your comments at face value. Since you are both thoughtful and persuasive, I hope that you are airing your views with the appropriate people within the administration.</p>
<p>Not applying here now…jk jk. </p>
<p>I was never applying here anyways, I just heard about it on Conan O’Brien.</p>
<p>I never really expected this to be so newsworthy, I’ve always thought the rule was merely common sense.</p>
<p>I think the Daily published a remarkable cogent assessment of why this story has taken off despite there being nothing particularly remarkable about a rule prohibiting “private” activities while your roommate is still in the room.</p>
<p>[Tufts</a> Daily - Editorial | Selling sex, the news media sell out](<a href=“http://www.tuftsdaily.com/editorial-selling-sex-the-news-media-sell-out-1.1934920]Tufts”>http://www.tuftsdaily.com/editorial-selling-sex-the-news-media-sell-out-1.1934920)</p>
<p>I particularly liked this paragraph (full disclosure, I’ve long held the views expressed in this article about traditional print media): </p>
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</p>
<p>Though, I liked Conan’s bit about it. :)</p>
<p>Yolanda King was and continues to be, it seems, a complete moron.</p>
<p>I’m enjoying my life at Tufts so much that I just couldn’t find the time to search for my password to log in here… not even in response to the rantings of WCASParent against FA to international students some time back…
But this topic takes the cake… by the way, my new girlfriend at Tufts spent her first night in my bed while my roommate turned the other way on the night before this news came out on the Tufts Daily…we don’t have any problems with it… we sexcile mine and her room mate everyday for a few hours…this is what college is for… room mates don’t really have any problems with each other on these issues… I would stop this on the very first indication from my room mate that he did not feel comfortable with it… this rule will never be employed except to deliberately get someone into trouble…</p>
<p>Honestly, no one I’ve talked to here on campus thought it was a big deal at all. It’s really kind of common sense anyway. Who stays in the room while their roommate is having sex? It was kind of just like a weird rule but no one cared. Everyone I talk to is far more concerned about the new alcohol policy than anything else.</p>
<p>haha, I forgot about this place. how is everyone?
I think this policy is goofy. that is all.</p>
<p>it’s amazing how people trivialize this issue. in most colleges, if you complained to your roommate about his/her sex acts, the roommate isn’t going to say, “you’re right i’ll go elsewhere”; if you complain to the RA, he/she will encourage you to work it out will your roommate; so you’re back to square one.</p>
<p>my friend’s daughter, at a catholic college no less, has to put up with her roommate and roommate’s boyfriend having sex in the room every weekend in the middle of the night. (he attends a community college and comes to visit every weekend.) they wait till she’s asleep, but she usually wakes up.</p>
<p>you’d be surprised at the number of students who transfer to colleges where they can live at home over this issue. if your roommate, or your child’s roommate, is depraved enough to have sex in front of a third party, a frank discussion between roommates isn’t going to solve the problem.</p>
<p>another thing, and this goes to what snarf says about tufts students having the social skills to deal with their own problems, this generation of students appears to be less confrontational than their parents, but if they complain they usually complain to their mothers first. if i’m paying 50,000 a year for college, i don’t want my child calling to complain about the roommate’s sex life, if the college wants to make a rule all the better</p>
<p>So what’s the change in the alcohol policy?</p>
<p>From what I understand (I’m a freshman this year so I don’t know the whole story), the policy last year was that on your first alcohol offense you got a warning and then on your second offense you got put on pro-one. This year, there is no warning at all, you get put on pro-one your first time. Also, if you didn’t do your alcohol education course over the summer you got put on pro-one instead of just having stricter punishment if you did get caught drinking. So a lot of people are really upset over it.</p>
<p>The issue that most people have with the policy change is that getting TEMSed (being treated by Tufts EMS for alcohol) counts as a violation, so there are now repercussions for getting someone help when they’ve drank too much.</p>
<p>I graduated from Tufts in 1975. Back then, the “issues” of how to handle sexual activity in a dorm room were really no different than they are today, at least in terms of the dynamics of student behavior and room mate relationships. Hell, my dorm floor was coed and it often seemed that regardless of gender, there were hot and cold running students in various states of dress or undress at all hours of the night, particularly on weekends. Were there at times excesses in behavior or frictions between room mates that had to be sorted out due to one party being inconsiderate - sure. However, room mates generally worked out between themselves how to approach having private time in their rooms and accommodating each other’s sensitivities, students in general took responsibility for their guests and in 3 years of living in the dorms, I never heard of a problem elevating to the point where the admin got involved, either in a particular incident or by way of an enforced policy. So what has changed? Whether you want to call it acting in loco parentis, caving to political correctness, a trend towards “zero tolerance” born out of fear of parent complaints, litigation or bad publicity and criticism, schools all over more and more are meddling in the minutia of students’ personal lives. The result is that college students are often treated like infants. Why in the world is a rule necessary to prohibit sex in a dorm room when a room mate is present? Shouldn’t it be enough to say that students are expected to work out adult issues with mutual consideration and respect and that the admin will get involved on a case by case basis to impose a solution only where the students are unable to figure one out themselves?</p>
<p>BTW, this issue has been picked up by the media not only about Tufts but about colleges in general. In this morning’s issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer, major article on sex in the dorms and how a variety of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania colleges handle the issues. Of course, Tufts was discussed and was conspicuous as the only school mentioned with a formal policy specifically addressing sex. </p>
<p>As to the alcohol policy, that’s even more disturbing. The new policy, quite simply, poses a threat to the safety and health of students. You can “legislate” all you want; underage student drinking is never going to go away. The goal should be to educate and promote safe and responsible drinking decisions. The school’s primary focus should be from a health and safety perspective, not a “police” perspective. Now students who need help will be fearful of making the call to EMS. Brilliant.</p>
<p>I also have a big problem with the “disincentive” for calling EMS for a help if a student drinks too much. Does someone have to die or sue before someone higher up realizes this is a DUMB idea?</p>
<p>^ STRONGLY agree with this. someone needs to look up what “harmful reduction” before someone seriously gets hurt.</p>