<p>Some universities allow students to room with the opposite gender and I had come across a thread a few months ago on a different website about parents discussing how bad and “unholy” it is for a boy to room for girl and this question came to me. Would you be against your kid rooming with the opposite gender?</p>
<p>If you are against rooming with the opposite gender if the kid were an incoming freshman would you be more willing if they were a sophomore, junior, or senior? </p>
<p>also, this question doesn’t have to apply only to dorms, it could be apply to apartments as well. </p>
<p>Given that most fr housing assignments are randomized, I don’t think I’d subject my DD to having some random dude being her roomie. However, if say she wanted to move off campus in soph year, I trust her ability to pick & choose a competent and responsible cohort of future roommates regardless of gender or sexual orientation. As freshmen? no way because of no choice. Afterwards? I won’t care.</p>
<p>Are we talking rooming (as in sharing same room) or sharing an apartment with separate bedrooms?
And is the opposite gender person a platonic friend or a romantic partner? </p>
<p>this is the forum I had come across while looking up more info (I have no desire to room with opposite sex but the topic did interest me). This is in no way to disparage or encourage the religion. I believe it provides some interesting and unique pros and cons. </p>
<p>@Pizzagirl The articles I found are about sharing rooms. it’s called “gender neutral” housing. but an apartment with different bedrooms could also be discussed. </p>
<p>I think my child would have issues being assigned a random roommate of the opposite gender freshman year. There are families and students who are okay with this, but mine is not one of them.</p>
<p>I’ve had male apartment mates where everyone has their own bedroom (shared bathrooms). That’s not a problem. I’ve always known them before deciding to room together.</p>
<p>As a random roommate assignment I don’t think it is a good idea. Adjusting freshman year is hard enough without adding that. My D2’s college allows this after freshman year. Don’t know if many kids do it, though. I guess I would be okay with D2 doing it with a platonic friend of the opposite sex. Too fraught with complications if things go bad if it is someone she were romantically involved with, though, so I would discourage that. There are definitely mixed gender suites at her college (rooms are single sex, but they share a common area with other rooms where students may be of the opposite gender). That is fine, IMHO.</p>
<p>I would not be happy if my D got assigned a male roommate, and I don’t think she would be, either. We’re a socially liberal family, but I think this is pushing it. There are just too many potential issues here.</p>
<p>If it were ok with my kid, I wouldn’t be against it. I don’t think either of mine would have been happy as a freshman with an unknown room mate of the opposite gender. In a suite-type situation where there was a certain amount of privacy- shared common space with separate sleeping areas, I don’t think there would have been an issue at all from sophomore year on. There is a lot of adjustment the first year, and
adding gender neutral rooming into the equation seems like an unnecessary and potentially stressful addition.</p>
<p>From your other threads and your user name, I wonder if you are a journalist?</p>
<p>I read the thread abut BYU and it discusses co-ed dorms, more than room sharing.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that the term “co-ed dorm” could mean a variety of arrangements, from men and women having separate suites in the same general dorm to alternating floors, to having separate rooms on the same floor. I personally do not know of an incident where it has meant two students of the opposite gender randomly assigned to share rooms. </p>
<p>Off campus, there is also a difference between two students sharing a place together alone with one bedroom, and students sharing a place where each has his/her own bedroom, sometimes a large group of students sharing a larger apartment or house together. </p>
<p>As a parent, I would have a different level of concern about each of these situations, from not liking it at all to it not being much of an issue. Naturally, I would want to discuss any living arrangement where I am financially involved with my children. In many cases, students renting an off campus apartment or house involves parents co-signing a lease. A co-ed situation is only one of many possible topics of discussion in this case. </p>
<p>If my daughter is comfortable with it, I’ll support it. Under some circumstances, I might even recommend it. I know that a number of my own “life arrangements” when I was young made me a lot less self-conscious about my body.</p>
<p>Well, my D was opposed to the idea of random roommates of any gender unless she had her own room with a lock in a suite-type situation. Personally, I wouldn’t like it either. And, there are some recent horror stories that come from roommie assignments. Pass. </p>
<p>Even Oberlin which has allowed for roommates of the opposite gender since the late '60’s didn’t assign random roommates in this manner when I or most younger alums attended. It was an option students themselves had to affirmatively opt into. If a given student didn’t opt in, he/she wouldn’t get an opposite-gendered roommate. </p>
<p>Also, students who do opt-in and have an opposite gendered roommate tend to be placed in “split doubles” where each individual do mostly have their own private spaces. </p>
<p>Only snag is that arrangement is the roommate assigned to the room closest to the door has to be ok with his/her roommate going through his/her space in order to leave/enter his/her own room. </p>
<p>@T26E4 I don’t have enough posts behind me to have good credibility on CC yet. however, I have been visiting CC since Late April and I made am account. i’m just curious about many things. , and no I have no other motives for why I asked this question. Asking my parents only gets me two (and usually they are the same) opinions. If I ask on CC I can get tens or hundreds. </p>
<p>Okay Newsie: I don’t know if would support it for freshman, but I would allow it for upperclassmen as an option. If kids could be put in a suite-type arrangement, as opposed to a single room, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. </p>
<p>My own son, just a soph, surprised me by living with a girl he had never met over the summer in a sublet apartment. The location and price were right, that was for sure. Each had his own bedroom and bath with a shared living room and kitchen. Yes, I wondered how it would go. She was very attractive and more sophisticated than my son. He had a girlfriend already. Everything was fine. The girl taught him to cook and he made a new friend. There was no hanky panky.</p>
<p>When I was in college and living off-campus, I always had male housemates… I was usually the only girl but I had my own room. Wouldn’t have changed a thing. Having a male “room” mate assigned to me… like sharing a room, na, not for me. Would not be thrilled with it for my kids. If it were their choice? I’d probably put my foot down on anything “random” but if were someone they really trusted then I guess I’d just have to trust their decision.</p>