Gender-Neutral Housing Debate: Not on My Campus

Before you remark that Notre Dame is "stuck in the dark ages" and such an arcane policy reflects conservativism at a predominantly Catholic university, allow me to shed a little light on the actual views of students and administrators on just why we, to this day, stick with single-sex housing.

It's not that mixed-gender housing hasn't been proposed at Notre Dame in the past. I talked with Grant Woodman, associate director of Residence Life at Notre Dame, who noted that the idea has been tossed around before.

"It's been put out there, the idea of co-ed residence halls, but it hasn't been taken to very well," he said, "by the student body."

That's right -- it's the students that typically shoot down the idea of mixed-gender housing.

And I think I can understand why: most students don't want to change anything about the dorms they live in now, so while they might agree with such a change in principle, the response is, "sure, but not in my dorm."

What's so special about the dorms as they are now? The university's 30 single-sex dorms are organized in such a way that most students live in the same dorm for all four years of their undergraduate study. The dorms become like the fraternities and sororities that Notre Dame doesn't have -- all the residence halls have mascots, their own traditions, and they even compete in inter-hall athletics. Students usually develop a strong association with their dorm, and dorm rivalries are a hallowed tradition.

So if you asked me if it were okay to change my male-only dorm to mixed-gender, I'd say I agree with the idea in principle, but no thanks, because I like Fisher Hall just the way it is. (Sounds rather sexist, I know, but I don't know any girls who would want to live here anyway -- our dorm is pretty ugly.) I'd wager that most students -- even the progressives among us -- would agree that they actually prefer things the way they are now.

So you can imagine I smiled to myself when I read Willy's comment that "I imagine they (mixed-gender dorms) meet little resistance these days." They've been resisted a few times already here at Notre Dame.

An even perhaps more surprising regulation -- and even more arcane -- is the university's infamous "parietals" policy, which has existed since the early years of Notre Dame's founding.

Parietals refer to the visitation hours that are imposed on all campus dorms, meaning that members of the opposite sex must leave the dorm at midnight on weekdays and 2 a.m. on weekends. Students naturally complain about such restrictive policies, and while it's often a burden, students have never formally requested a policy change. They seem to have accepted it.

I asked Woodman why Notre Dame maintains the policy, and he noted that it's primarily about giving dorm residents some peace and quiet, and some privacy during the nighttime hours. Which I think the policy achieves -- I know on a Saturday night when I'm trying to get some sleep, the party next door will be over at 2 a.m. when all the girls leave.

And while Woodman said the policy intends to also enforce the rule of "no overnight guests of the opposite sex," students will tell you that if you want to "break parietals," as it's called, it can be easily done. So students have accepted the policy, even if it's highly outdated, as Willy's piece would suggest.

So what about gender-neutral housing at a school like Notre Dame? I asked Woodman if he thought it was a possibility.

"Oh no," was the reply. "I don't believe that'll be the case in my lifetime."

Which I understand. If students don't want mixed-gender housing, and don't even want to formally remove the visitation hours imposed on single-sex dorms, I don't foresee gender-neutral housing on this campus anytime soon.

After all, students know when they come to Notre Dame that they won't have the option of mixed-gender housing, and those who don't agree with the university's housing system have the option to live off campus.

Willy's essay posed this fundamental question about the necessity of gender-neutral housing: "If a male and female student were simply great friends and confident they would make great roommates, why shouldn't they be able to share a dorm room?"

I'd have to agree with him that, in theory, I find nothing wrong with boys rooming with girls. But in practice, there are some situations, like that at Notre Dame, where I doubt students would want to change existing housing policies in order to create gender-neutral housing options.

What's right for Wesleyan and Oberlin just isn't right for Notre Dame in this case, and while progressives might at first glance condemn such traditional and restrictive policies, I'd tell them to look deeper, and see that for a school like Notre Dame, this system simply works, and students -- even the progressives among them -- have come to embrace it.