Changing Policy to Allow Suitemates of Opposite Sex Simply a Matter of Principle
By Michael Owen
Opinions Editor


On Friday afternoon last week, students involved in certain leadership programs on campus attended a luncheon in Edmunds Ballroom with the trustees of the college. There are 39 trustees, thirty of whom are alumni, ranging in age from their twenties to their eighties, and one of them, who is non-voting, sat at my table. When asked about the possibility of allowing students of different genders to room together, this man—whose name not coincidentally corresponds with the name of a certain south campus dining hall—responded that it was happy for those of us who support such a change that he was no longer in a position to vote on the issue; given the choice, he said he would favor a return to the segregation, abandoned decades ago, between men’s and women’s campuses. (Smiley and its northern neighbors comprised the former; two of the present south campus dorms and another, which has since been demolished and replaced with Wig Hall, the latter.)

Upon this declaration, another trustee—this one a woman in her sixties whose recollection of the north-south boundary was likewise fond—became suddenly animated. During her time at Pomona, she said, the women’s curfew was 12:30 a.m. Shortly before that hour, Harwood residents and their male companions would gather on the lawn outside and conduct such romantic preparations as to make more bearable the agony of separation. Our trustee amusedly recalled the time she and her friends threw water bombs, from the roof, at the unsuspecting couples thus engaged.

Though scheduling constraints substantially ended our discussion there, one might have taken from its last few minutes that the foremost reason for continuing to prohibit co-ed roommates was that to do otherwise would be a further step away from the long-lost golden age, in which there naturally occurred scenarios so brilliantly entertaining as to become the stuff of trustee-student luncheon anecdotes some decades hence.

Without question the majority of Pomona’s trustees, including the ones who sat my table, are considerably more circumspect than to make such a choice on such a basis, but even allowing them the benefit of the doubt, one still must wonder what exactly the reasoning behind their prohibition is.

When asked about their feelings toward the policy as it stands, certain Pomona administrators I have spoken with make the case for their objection admittedly not on the basis of principle, but of tradition. The trustees, they say, value the ‘decorum’ and ‘propriety’ that are apparently the attributes only of gender-segregated campuses, and the administrators’ opinion is typically one of contentment with a status quo whose flaws, though tacitly acknowledged, are not in urgent need of reform. They don’t oppose the change in question, but neither do they encourage it, and for good or ill it is a reality of Pomona College that controversial initiatives lacking enthusiastic administrative support face an uphill battle.

Where decorum, propriety and traditionalism may be viewed in support of the present housing regulations, Pomona’s role as a progressive institution concerned with social reform cannot. That Pomona is thus concerned follows from the fact that it encourages the sort of thoughtful reflection that (borne “in trust for mankind” per the college gates’ canonical dictum) tends to prompt meaningful progress toward tolerance and justice. More important, though, and perhaps more relevant, is the fact that Pomona forbids discrimination against members of any gender or sexual orientation. Such a claim surely contradicts housing restrictions that discriminate not only against members of each sex (by denying them the opportunity to live with people of their choosing who do not conform to a gender requirement), but against members of various sexual orientations as well. If gender segregation was originally implemented with the intention of discouraging sexual attraction between proximate residents, that intention is—by the admission of anyone who recognizes the presence at Pomona of non-heterosexuals (or rejects the notion of categorical attraction in general)—completely undermined by a vastly prevailing view of sexual diversity. Even if such categories are valid (a supposition I have heard implicitly endorsed by some of those in positions to decide on this type of policy), any student who is not strictly heterosexual faces an acutely greater challenge in choosing a roommate with whom he or she can guarantee the absence of sexual tension. He or she is denied an opportunity (more specifically, the opportunity of living in any non-single room on campus), in express violation of Pomona’s Nondiscrimination Policy, on the basis of his or her sexual orientation.

Though these arguments are compelling of themselves, the still greater discussion concerns the question of to what extent the college is willing to trust its students, to invest in them the confidence that as competent and reflective adults they can successfully direct essential aspects of their own lives according not to the college’s dictate but to their own. Pomona has a history of investing students with that trust, and of discovering that they are worthy recipients thereof. It is unlikely, as a result, that we will ever return to the days of men’s north and women’s south campuses. Pomona’s first experiment in co-ed dorms has, in the thirty years since its implementation, proven successful. It is time to move forward again, to allow for the well-being of every student at Pomona by offering elective co-ed two-room doubles and friendship suites. To do so is at its essence to provide for every person a living environment in which he or she can feel minimally threatened. Surely no one should be forced to live in co-ed suites, but neither should anyone be forced to live in those inhabited only by students of the same gender.

Pomona’s administrators and trustees are reasonable, intelligent and sympathetic people; they place considerable value on equity and fairness. Properly persuaded, they will take the step that is truest to that conviction; the consequence will be a college that more closely reflects the ideals it claims to value most.