Tufts University Limits When Students Can Have Sex
Living with someone in a small dorm room can be a challenging experience. Roommates often annoy each other. One roommate might be a night owl and the other an early bird. One might like to blare rap and the other likes soft classical music. But imagine how awkward it would be to come back to your room and find your roommate having sex in your room.
Evidently that exact experience has been occurring more and more often at Tufts University. Tufts had to recently create a new policy that says students cannot have sex while their roommate is present. Also, one roommate’s sexual habits should not impede the others privacy, study, or sleeping habits.
“There were incidents that occurred last year, and in the past, where residents of rooms started to feel uncomfortable with what their roommates were doing in the room,” Assistant Director for Community and Judicial Affairs Carrie Ales-Rich said.
Some think this policy was designed to decrease students’ sexual activity on campus. However, Ales-Rich says that the goal of the new policy is only to “empower the residents to have a good conversation with the roommate.”
One student said he didn’t think the policy was necessary and that he thought the school was “imposing something that should be decided between roommates.”
I have to agree with this student. As college students, we should be able to have a civil discussion with our peers and address any grievances we might have. However, the policy would be useful in extreme situations where conversations have not solved the matter already.
Yet, the majority of poll respondents think that Tufts’ new sex policy is not overstepping their boundaries because Tufts University should “make sure the dorms are a comfortable environment for all.” Only 32 percent said that Tufts “should not be making rules about when students can have sex.”
What do you think? Is this a conflict that students can handle on their own, or is some interference necessary to make sure all students are comfortable living in the dorms?
Via NY Daily News