Dan Kaplan: Giving students a place to come home

Admit it: unless you are a member of the relevant communities (HCS, UA, LGBT, etc.), you had no idea that co-ed, on-campus living existed as an issue until it ran on the front page of this newspaper.

I think we should commend our elected student representatives: this may be the first time in my overlong time at Penn that they've tried to tackle something relevant (and no, my lush-loving friends, our God-given rights to intoxicate underage freshmen at frat parties do not count).

But I'm confused: why is this a debate? The rightness of a policy change that would allow voluntary mixed-sex cohabitation on campus seems so self-apparently clear that I am having a fundamental problem grasping the other side. For the sake of argument and intellectual honesty, however, I will try.

Here we go:

Argument #1: Parents will not like it. One does not have to have a novelist's imagination to picture the faces of Dr. and Mrs. Huxley M. Long Island Resident losing their color upon the discovery that their daughter, Eleanor, has the option to share a tiny triple with Jack and Mike, those two horny freshman boys from the tour. Nor do we have to try too hard to envision parents of prospective students dropping Penn from their prospects upon learning of its permissive policy; Penn wants to pacify its parents and select students from as wide a pool as possible -- allowing co-ed cohabitation could conceivably complicate both.

#2: Penn does not want to give tacit approval to the practice of premarital sex. Even though a broad swath of American culture has accepted (even encouraged) that a good number of young people will consummate a good number of unions before the exchange of vows, an old taboo still hovers (and may again be gaining cultural ground). And for various political and economic reasons (see #1), and perhaps out of a lingering deference to this taboo, this makes Penn feel icky.

#3: Instituting this type of policy change is inherently problematic: the main thing driving the push for co-ed cohabitation is a desire to ease the social burdens on a marginalized group of people (in this case, gay and transgender students). But actually doing so allows for unintended consequences directly linked to 1 and 2. More importantly, we have to consider that for any number of reasons, other students might be uncomfortable with a mixed-sex room on their floor, and dealing with this issue is a logistical nightmare and a political mess; we'd have to either include questions about personal beliefs on housing applications or officially designate a block of housing for mixed-sex rooms. The former is clearly impossible, and if we want to increase tolerance, we need to maximize inter-group contact, not eliminate it.

#4 is pretty straightforward: The current status quo is not really a big problem, and if you don't like it, there is plenty of housing off campus.

All of the other arguments that advocate for this side derive from reactionary bigotry, religious idiocy and long-outdated views about what should and shouldn't be. For obvious reasons, these are pointless to address.

The thing is that all of the above are solid arguments. But they're still dry flecks of dust in the wind against the weight of the other side.

I find it strange and troubling that the debate is being framed around discrimination. The issue, it seems, will be decided on whether or not current residential policy is "heterosexist" (whatever that means) and whether someone can prove that a policy of not allowing co-ed cohabitation discriminates against gays.

Yes, if Penn allows co-ed cohabitation, some parents will freak. Yes, some prospective students will disapprove and not apply. And there is no question that translating the policy into practice will make a big, sloppy mess.

And -- the obsolete worldviews inherent in the former two aside -- all you need is a little bit of empathy to understand the insignificance of these costs:

So here's a story:

If you were here and reading the DP regularly in February 2002, you may remember a column by Michelle White, a transgender student at Penn. One night, Michelle was walking around downtown and two drunk students threw her against a wall, wrapped fingers around her throat and ran the edge of a knife down her cheek. Another night, one of the same men found her on Walnut Street and chose to throw her to the pavement and stomp on her head, legs and arms.

All of this happened in a context at Penn in which, as she put it, she "learned to ignore the snickers of passers-by, the notes left on the whiteboard on my door, the catcalls from drunken groups on weekend nights...."

In other words, verbal abuse and the fear of hate-fueled violence were facts of her every day, not only on the street, where they may be a given, but in her on-campus home as well, where they should not.

So Penn has a choice. It can maintain the status quo, keep the parents happy and the housing bureaucracy well-oiled, leaving people like Michelle to the mercy of dogs. Or Penn can get with the times, accept certain facts, reap whatever whirlwind may come and move on, giving people like Michelle a place on campus where they won't be afraid to come home.

Dan Kaplan is a senior History major from New York City.

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