The University of Idaho backtracked on a plan to offer dorm suites to opposite-sex couples after an alarmed family organization raised questions about the concept.
“We commend President [Steven Daley] Laursen for changing course. This was clearly a wrong-headed and poorly thought-through plan from the beginning, and he was right to scrap it,” said Bryan Fischer, executive director of the Idaho Values Alliance.
“With out-of-wedlock births on the rise among Idaho’s young women, and STDs such as Chlamydia on the rise all across the country, the last thing we need is for a public institution to create environments that foster sexual experimentation,” he said.
The plan was revealed in a recent report in the Spokane Spokesman-Review, which confirmed the school would allow students of the opposite sex to live together in campus suites when the fall semester began in August.
The report said the school already had coed dorms and allowed opposite-sex couples to live together in apartments if they were married.
The report said school housing recruitment coordinator Tina Deines confirmed the new living “option.”
Fischer then publicized the issue on his Idaho Values Alliance website, and word reached state lawmakers.
“Word evidently got back to U of I administrators of this brewing storm,” he noted, because the school wrote letters complaining the reports “misrepresented” the school, since such coed living arrangements would be provided only for upper class students.
The letter author, Bruce Pitman, vice provost of student affairs, said the coed option was “to effectively foster positive relationships with the opposite sex.”
Fischer noted, “Trying to defend the policy change on such slim grounds is farcical, since 20- and 21-year old girls can get just as pregnant and just as an infected with an STD as an 18- and 19-year old.”
The school went further into “scramble” mode, Fischer said, by saying the option would not be available now but may be considered in the future.
“The potential for sexual mischief here is obviously significant,” Fischer commented, “and one of the things we want to know from university officials is what exactly would stop two couples from requesting one of these suites and then immediately converting the same-sex bedrooms on either side of the living area into cozy opposite-sex bedrooms.”
Soon came the full retreat, with Laursen confirming the university had changed its plans.
“Laursen says he made the decision because the suites didn’t provide appropriate bathroom accommodations for opposite gender roommates. But it’s hard not to think that he wanted to get this out of the way before he had to face some awkward ‘What-were-you-thinking’ questions from the House and Senate Education Committees next week at the Idaho legislature,” Fischer said.
“Regardless, President Daley-Laursen has made a socially responsible decision here, and Idaho parents are glad he did,” he said.
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