by Hillary Smith
WHAT’S HAPPENING
- Think coed floors and bathrooms spell awkward moments in college? Try coed dorm rooms. A growing number of schools are adopting less stringent policies around cohabitation on-campus.
- Liberal colleges like Hampshire, Wesleyan and Oberlin have offered coed rooms for a few years now. But students at universities from New York to Stanford are calling for more lax gender requirements to accommodate primarily LGBT students who’d rather room with the opposite sex (Boston.com 4.2.08).
- Straight students are opting for coed rooms as well, citing practicalities like getting along better. Although undoubtedly some roommates are in a relationship, the majority maintain the buddy system, and some schools strongly discourage romantic couples from shacking up because of the potential for messy breakups (Boston.com 4.2.08).
WHAT THIS MEANS TO BUSINESS
- Millennials live boy-girl during the summers and after college, so why not during? Accustomed to freedom of choice, Millennials are unfazed by innuendos and raise a neutral eye toward gender.
- Not all Millennials are up for the challenge of living with the opposite sex’s abundance of beauty products or smelly socks. Rather than suggesting that their generation is wildly progressive, coed dorm rooms are more symbolic of the way Millennials seek and find the best solutions for them.
