Columnists | Opinion

Columnist: You shouldn’t have to get out when the roomie gets busy

Posted on Oct. 05, 2009, at 2:36 a.m.

Tufts University, just outside of Boston, is one of the best schools in New England and arguably in the nation. In the Princeton Review’s 2006 edition of Best 361 Colleges, Tufts was seventh in a list of the 20 schools in the country where students are happiest.

Maybe that’s because its student body has exorbitant amounts of sex.

I’m just kidding, but there must be a high rate of sexual activity there, because administration added a small sentence to the school handbook this year under the sub-category of “Host Responsibilities” which has generated a lot of national media buzz. A dormitory occupant with an overnight guest “may not engage in sexual activity while your roommate is present in the room. Any sexual activity within your assigned room should not ever deprive your roommate(s) of privacy, study, or sleep time.”

Let’s break down this rule. Tufts frowns upon coitus while your roommate hangs out awkwardly on the opposite side of the room, doing whatever it is he or she does. It puts an end to “sexiling,” the practice of telling or influencing your roommate to take a hike during you and your lover’s bump and grind time. But only when a guest is sleeping over?

There are many concerns I have for this new school policy. Most have to do with the general morality of students. Is it ever OK to have sex with your roommate around? Some insane people must think it is.

E-mail me or comment online if you and your roommate have had these issues. Please. I would love to tell your story. I want to fight for the maligned roomie. Give me embarrassing stories. I’d also love to hear from someone who has done this to his or her roommate. I’d like to know what is going on inside your horny little head. I want to put together a tell-all investigative report for publication here.

I’m not trying to be trashy. When I was hired at The Maine Campus, I never thought I would be talking about such a ridiculous thing. Tufts spokeswoman Kim Thurler told the Boston Herald that there were roughly a dozen complaints about such activities and that Tufts “really didn’t have anything concrete in place for [them] to set clear boundaries.”

If this really is a problem, we all need to look at our morality as college students. College students are stereotypically randy, notoriously spontaneous and often not well behaved. But a student having sex with a roommate present is deviant in my book. Any type of sex is private, especially when someone in the room is Facebooking or watching TV. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I can’t see any time this could be construed as acceptable in any way. The fact that there is no societal roadblock to this sort of activity among tomorrow’s leaders scares me, and I’m 18.

I hope not many people dispute the rule. Unless you are a sexual Ronald Reagan — advocating a laissez-faire stance on bedroom regulation — the point of this rule makes sense. It is the wording that gets me. Isn’t this terribly hard to enforce? What do you do when you look across the room at this sort of display? Go tell your RA? Bring them back to the room to investigate? What is the penalty? A meeting with the dean? That would be awkward.

If this is happening to you, please, for the love of God, talk to your roommate. Don’t even wait for them to finish nature’s duty. Take care of the situation before it snowballs and your roommate thinks he or she can do this every night. You’ll get walked all over if you don’t stand up for yourself.

And, to the ladies and gentlemen partaking in these sorts of relations — keep it in your pants. Your roommate has to eat sometime.

Michael Shepherd never thought he’d use the words “sexual Ronald Reagan” in a row.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009, 2:36 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.