The College Fix

Catholic University of America students will no longer share dormitories with members of the opposite sex. CUA President John Garvey made the announcement in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal yesterday, citing excessive binge-drinking and hooking-up as reasons for the change:

Here is one simple step colleges can take to reduce both binge drinking and hooking up: Go back to single-sex residences. …

I would have thought that young women would have a civilizing influence on young men. Yet the causal arrow seems to run the other way. Young women are trying to keep up–and young men are encouraging them (maybe because it facilitates hooking up).

Next year all freshmen at The Catholic University of America will be assigned to single-sex residence halls. The year after, we will extend the change to the sophomore halls. It will take a few years to complete the transformation.

The change will probably cost more money. There are a few architectural adjustments. We won’t be able to let the ratio of men and women we admit into the freshman class vary from year to year with the size and quality of the pools. But our students will be better off.

Heidi Schlumpf of the National Catholic Reporter was not impressed:

Binge drinking and casual sex truly are problems on college campuses. But unless Garvey plans to return the entire university to 1950, I doubt this move will do much to curb either harmful practice. In fact, as others have pointed out, some of the worst binge drinking happens in single-sex men’s dorms, not to mention in single-sex sorority and fraternity houses.

But the “change” will sure position CUA as a place Catholic parents can feel “safe” sending their adult children. A brilliant PR move.

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