Coed dorm rooms now allowed
Major colleges in the United States are allowing for dormitory rooms to be coed, the Associated Press said.
Schools including Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania, Oberlin College, Clark University and the California Institute of Technology are allowing students of the opposite sex to share a dorm room, The Washington Times said. Other schools such as Stanford University will also allow the policy in the fall semester of 2008.
Students and schools say that the policy comes primarily from those who want to live with close friends who are of the opposite sex, although couples living together are not unheard of.
"It ultimately comes down to finding someone that you feel is compatible with you," said Jeffrey Chang, a junior at Clark in Worcester, Mass., who co-founded the National Student Genderblind Campaign, a group that is pushing for gender-neutral housing. "Students aren't doing this to make a point. They're not doing this to upset their parents. It's really for practical reasons."