To the Editor:
Co-ed rooms. Sounds cool, right? Sounds like an Oberlin thing. Just change a few lines of policy, and off we go into a progressive gender-utopia, right?
Nope.
High-ups are saying that we aren't mature enough to handle it. That alumni and donors will wet their undies. That pregnancy and STD rates will soar. That Oberlin shouldn't be condoning juiciness in general.
Uh... hello? I thought I knew what Oberlin stood for, but I guess I was deluded by that "Think One Person Can Change The World?" horseshit. Turns out that the 85 percent of Oberlin students who voted yes to co-ed rooms in last year's referendum can't change a damn thing as long as some uptight alumni in the suburbs somewhere can't deal with boys and girls seeing each other in their skivvies.
There is a percentage of the population that is uncomfortable with a female president. Should Dye resign? Parents of prospective might be uncomfortable with homosexuality. Should we ask gay students to stop holding hands and wearing pink ribbons during All Roads until the neo-conservative coast is clear?
This isn't about getting the college to allow us to shack up on campus, and don't let yourself accept this dangerous simplification. I can't imagine moving in with a love interest at this stage in my life. I can, however imagine wanting to live with my best friend, who happens to be female. How about this: I'll promise Res. Life that I won't touch her privates if they'll let me live with her.
Truth is that they should be coming to us for advice, we've grown up in a gender politics minefield complicated by disease and violence. Our role models are a crazed media and a misguided, clueless motley crew of authority figures. We were dealing with AIDS and sex and rape at an age when they were all giggling about who Muffy went with to the drive-in. We are the latch-key generation. We are proud products of our own moral compass, and nobody's gonna tell us that we aren't mature enough to decide how we're going to relate to people of the opposite sex.
Here's what it's really about: sex-segregated housing is based on an outmoded heterosexist paradigm that says that women are inherent, inferior sexual victims, and men are inherent, superior sexual predators. Women are dependent on paternal power structures to defend them from rogue males from which they have no other defense. Sex-segregated housing is one manner of saving their chastity so that they are still in a condition to snag a nice, upper-class boy upon graduation.
Do we really think this? No. So why do we accept a housing system that perpetuates these debilitating myths? Because they know they can shaft us and they think we'll let them get away with it. I'm on the Student Life Committee and I will vote for a weak-ass compromise because at this stage, something is better than nothing. If the student body decides what it wants, and says it loud, then I'll have the backing to push for more. It's up to y'all at this point. GO see Cole. She's got office hours on Wednesday afternoons. Write to Dye. Write to SLC. Annoy the hell out of Housing and Dining. Get loud. We won on the abolition of slavery. We won on women and people of color in higher education. We'll win this one too, and the rest of the country will follow our lead.
Copyright © 1996, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 124, Number 22; April 26, 1996
Contact Review webmaster with suggestions or comments at ocreview@www.oberlin.edu.
Contact Review editorial staff at oreview@oberlin.edu.