Gay students at a prestigious Pennsylvania college have won the right to have opposite-sex roommates – saying same-sex roommate create too much temptation.
Swarthmore College, a 137-year-old private liberal-arts school located 11 miles outside Philadelphia, says coed rooms will be introduced on a limited basis this fall.
The proposal, according to Swarthmore’s alumni magazine, was made by members of the school’s “Queer Union,” which argued that mandatory same-gender rooming is “heterosexist.”
Factors like “attraction and homophobia” make homosexual students “less comfortable” living with same-gender roommates, student Timothy Stewart wrote in making the proposal.
In response, Swarthmore will set aside 50 rooms – about 4 percent of student housing – for mixed-sex housing.
A spokesman for the Empire State Pride Agenda – New York’s largest gay-lobby organization – said he was not aware of similar requests in New York.