Co-ed residence halls. Gender-neutral bathrooms. And clothing-optional sauna parties! Right?

I applaud the attention the co-ed Mayfield and McGill third floor have received, but the idea of co-ed dorms is hardly radical and certainly not new to Vanderbilt. At my dorm — McTyeire, the international house — Vanderbilt students have been living on co-ed halls since 1981. Unlike at Mayfield and McGill, this arrangement is not an end in itself, but a means for grouping students by a shared academic interest, learning a language. The benefits of co-ed halls, however, are just as apparent.

While the bathrooms at McTyeire are still (regressively, oppressively) segregated by sex, this is a minor concern when compared to all the other advantages of co-ed living, chief among them the greater quality of social interactions. You see, I’m more of a Ladies’ Man than a Man’s Man, and living on a floor with a bunch of other guys tended to socially reward the latter, leading to absurd wrestling matches, drunken yelling of quotes from “300” and baseball trivia contests, none of which was exactly my cup of tea. I have no doubt that living with all girls leads to a set of somewhat different, though ultimately similar, situations. Living on a mixed floor, however, keeps both groups relatively centered and sane.

Not only were the Commons dorms floors segregated, but access to other floors was denied between midnight and noon. Looking back on the experience, it seems downright unnatural. Humans — at least most of us — are rational and relational creatures, and taking down the levies to intersex contact will not cause a tidal wave of licentiousness; in fact, it will produce the opposite effect. Just as setting the drinking age at 21 encourages minors to view drinking as risque, breeding risky behavior, segregating halls by sex encourages residents to evaluate those of the opposite sex as potential sex partners, not as potential friends or even as fundamentally similar human beings. Therefore, there is this perception that if you’re caught walking around with a girl on your hall, she’s probably your girlfriend or nightly hookup — and everyone knows what it means if they see a girl leaving your room.

Faced with new situations, we naturally group ourselves according to superficial categories, including sex and race. While everyone recognizes the need to promote racial integration, have we completely forgotten sexual integration? The mentality of sex segregation is so ingrained into our culture that the ResEd Web site makes no mention of its policy; I had to e-mail to find out the specifics. There is nothing wrong with wanting to live with people of the same sex if that is one’s choice, but this arrangement should not be the default option. One day, colleges will stop treating their students like caged animals and desegregate the majority of the residence halls with respect to sex. Will Vanderbilt be the first to take this step, or will it follow in the footsteps of more prestigious institutions, as it has so often in the past? At the very least, more options should be introduced for those who desire co-ed living, including desegregating Towers suites, allowing students to room in a double with someone of the opposite sex (without marriage as a prerequisite) and making Commons halls co-ed.

—Jesse Jones is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Science. He can be reached at jesse.g.jones@vanderbilt.edu.