Dorm room policies discriminate against heterosexual couples

It had to be said.

At colleges and universities across our fair nation, there is a crisis facing the heterosexual youths of today: you can date each other, you can kiss and hug each other, you can even fuck each other all you want, but you can't live together on campus housing. While many religious practices are against this sort of thing, the ban is enforced at many self-described secular universities as well.

Most college dormitories allow residents to select roommates in the event of a vacancy. Now, the vast majority of dormitories are single-sex per room, or per suite. If two gay males are actively dating, they may move in together without a fuss. If a male and female are actively dating and wish to occupy the same dormitory room, World War III breaks out. To make a long story short, unless a heterosexual couple is married, living together is verboten unless they move off campus.¹ At Carnegie Mellon University, for example, married couples may stay in special housing way off-campus, with miles of red tape and hassles that make couples just want to say "fuck it" and find an apartment on their own.

Why is this happening? Simply stated, the antiquated notions behind dorm room roommate selection policies do not so much as consider the possibility of two romantically involved gay youths wishing to live together. If you don't want two people having sex in on-campus housing, just say so. Otherwise, let men and women co-exist peaceably regardless of the relations.

After all, it's not like the guys are going to get cooties or anything from living with women... or are they?

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Yes, yes, let's all point and laugh at the angry white straight male. I'm single, by the way.

¹ alarm reports that at Bennington College, mixed-sex housing is permitted.
pylon reports that Siena College used to allow mixed-sex townhouse living, but the practice ended in 2001 due to bad public sentiment.
MALTP reports that at Oberlin College, there is an active movement to allow mixed-sex housing.
wonko6942 says "a friend of mine at Wesleyan in CT reports that there are not only co-ed dorms, but co-ed showers there..." Rock on.

There actually are good reasons for the policy of not allowing mixed-sex room sharing, although not all of these would be reasons in a perfect world.

Some reasons boil down to the fact that women tend to be less strong than men, and so can reasonably fear physical attack by men. Some boil down to youths being emotionally unstable. The first reason is that if, for whatever reason, people are being allocated partners, rather than choosing them, and a mixed-sex allocation was made, there is the danger of the woman being attacked. You may object that universities should just avoid mixed-sex allocations, but if you do, you might go on and suggest that they institute a policy of not making mistakes. It doesn't help in the real world.

The second reason is that universities may reasonably decide that no (wo)man can make an informed decision about the advisability of living with a man. This is not necessarily true, but there are two cases in this one point. The first is that the university might get sued if something bad happens (See above). Universities are particularly averse to this. The second part is that most couples are heterosexual. Typically neither partner is right in deciding that living together is a good thing when in university, as a) They haven't (normally) been together that long, and b) If they do break up things get REALLY messy when living in one room. This reason is the big one, as it actually happens very commonly, while violence is not that common in reality. Basically, there is no way of preventing homosexuals from doing this, but that's just life.

Of course, many universities will allow mixed-sexes sharing the flats that they provide. This is typically not a problem, however, as they don't usually allow people to pick their flats.