Originally published in March 2008

Student Mary Sandberg thinks having coed floors in some residence halls would be a positive experience for Eastern students.

“I feel like it expands social life. It would be a lot easier to meet people,” Sandberg said.

However, the couple said being randomly assigned to a roommate of the opposite sex could cause some problems.

Sandberg said she thinks if Eastern were to adopt coed dorm rooms, people of the opposite sex should live together only if they mutually request each other as roommates.

Roommates who are dating should also have couples’ counseling available, Sandberg said.

In March, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported multiple universities in Oregon are experimenting with opposite-sex roommates in dorms.

Mark Hudson, director of Housing and Dining services, said Eastern has viewed the “coed line” by looking at bathroom separation.

“There are some schools that are running gender-free bathrooms, which means just use it,” Hudson said. “I just don’t think that’s a good fit for a university environment, and certainly not ours.”

In Eastern’s coed residence halls, genders are separated by floors. Hudson said this is because the bathrooms in the dorms are designed for single-sex use.

“You cannot have a male or female in there both and have them be comfortable,” Hudson said.

Coed floors are offered at Stevenson Hall.

Each suite has its own bathroom facility attached.

Besides the issue of bathrooms, Hudson said allowing students to live together who are romantically involved could create multiple problems.

“It adds a whole (other) dimension to what potential roommate conflicts could be,” Hudson said. “I believe when people come to college they need to be able to have some space with those that they’re having relationships with.”

At Willamette University in Salem, Ore., coed rooms are available for those who do not feel comfortable rooming with people of the same sex because of their own gender identity, the article reports.

“The landscape’s a lot more complicated than it used to be,” Hudson said. “Certainly the whole transgender and all that are new things to be considered.”

While Hudson said he doesn’t think allowing opposite-sex roommates is in Eastern’s near future, he said the possibility could be revisited when the residence hall bathrooms are redone.

“If students had input and an argument on how it could work and not disrupt people, we could certainly talk about it,” Hudson said. “But that doesn’t mean we just go rush to do it.”

Barbara Harrington can be reached at 581-7942 or bjharrington@eiu.edu.

Coed dormitories are appearing across college campuses in Oregon, but Eastern students shouldn’t expect to see it at Eastern, according to director of Housing and Dining Services Mark Hudson. (File photo/The Daily Eastern News)

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