Fifty years ago, colleges had all manner of rules regarding behavior of students on campus. In some schools, students living in the dormitories had to dress for dinner with men required to wear coats and ties and women required to wear dresses. In many more places, there were strict rules about when a student could have a visitor of the opposite sex in his or her room. In some places the rules governed behavior during that visit by the member of the opposite sex. Nearly every university had detailed rules governing consumption of alcohol and other rules banning the use of drugs of any sort. The universities acted in loco parentis (meaning in the place of the student's parents.)
Then everything changed. It started in the 1960s and the movement gathered force as the years passed. First, dress codes went out the window. Next, limitations on dorm visitations were terminated along with the rules for behavior during those visits. Alcohol and drug rules stopped being enforced. Then dorms became co-ed. Then bathrooms became co-ed. In some places, limitations on students living together were dropped so that men and women became roommates. Things finally reached the point where the only proper description was "anything goes."
Suddenly, we're moving the other way. I heard earlier about a report from a college in Virginia where some students hung up a sign on a house on campus which read something like "freshman woman drop off point" with an arrow pointing towards the door to the house. This "outrage" was so terrible in the eyes of the university administration that the president sent a communication to all members of the university community chastising those who were so insensitive to women as to put us such a sign. And then there's people like "mattress girl" who carried a mattress around Columbia for nearly a year to protest against her purported rape by another student (which turned out to be an unsubstantiated claim.) Similar events have happened at many other schools where young men have been accused of rape or sexual misconduct and have been punished after a hearing held before a kangaroo court that would not even let the guy present a defense. It seems that "free love" has now morphed into "no love absent a formal legal consent (signature notarized please!) All those students who fought so hard to get the university OUT of student sexual relations now are watching their children protesting to put the university back into the middle of that area.
Then everything changed. It started in the 1960s and the movement gathered force as the years passed. First, dress codes went out the window. Next, limitations on dorm visitations were terminated along with the rules for behavior during those visits. Alcohol and drug rules stopped being enforced. Then dorms became co-ed. Then bathrooms became co-ed. In some places, limitations on students living together were dropped so that men and women became roommates. Things finally reached the point where the only proper description was "anything goes."
Suddenly, we're moving the other way. I heard earlier about a report from a college in Virginia where some students hung up a sign on a house on campus which read something like "freshman woman drop off point" with an arrow pointing towards the door to the house. This "outrage" was so terrible in the eyes of the university administration that the president sent a communication to all members of the university community chastising those who were so insensitive to women as to put us such a sign. And then there's people like "mattress girl" who carried a mattress around Columbia for nearly a year to protest against her purported rape by another student (which turned out to be an unsubstantiated claim.) Similar events have happened at many other schools where young men have been accused of rape or sexual misconduct and have been punished after a hearing held before a kangaroo court that would not even let the guy present a defense. It seems that "free love" has now morphed into "no love absent a formal legal consent (signature notarized please!) All those students who fought so hard to get the university OUT of student sexual relations now are watching their children protesting to put the university back into the middle of that area.
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