Patriot Media Network
The George Washington University’s current undergraduate enrollment, give or take, is around 10,000 students. This year, the university decided to offer gender-neutral housing for all of its students choosing to live in on-campus housing. Yes, we’re a little behind Princeton and Harvard but we’re still pretty advanced compared to Villanova and Pepperdine, who don’t allow premarital hand holding or dinners after six for couples who aren’t engaged. However a surprisingly low number of students actually chose opposite sex roommates for the up and coming year. The statistics (done by interns and lab rats alike) show that only about 150 students are registered to live with a roommate or roommates of the opposite gender.
Now, as an investigatory journalist bent on uncovering truth while still balancing family life, a girlfriend pregnant with another man’s child, and a propensity to ride in a dirt bike gang (possible television show pitch…thoughts?) I came up with a few reasons/examples as to why we saw this trend.
A warning to the faint of heart: I am a man. I don’t pretend to know anything about women because I’m not an idiot. Or maybe I am and just lack empathy. Either way, I’m sure there are many, many things you would have to say about living with men: we watch sports too often; we have stinky feet, we.dont.type.like.this.when.we.try.to.be.emphatic. and we’re pathetic, misogynistic, don’t share feelings, cause all the wars, assassinated presidents, our genitals cause death and famine – and I agree with all of it, I do. But I can’t write about it because I have no credibility. I do have credibility in being a man (or a poor excuse for one, at least). But I digress…
1. Men and women are not ready to coexist in the same room together. A claim as irrational as such certainly warrants an elaborate hypothetical example, so here we go: There’s a man, let’s call him Dave, and his roommate, Tim. And there is two women, let’s call one, say, Ciara, and the other Cherokee. So, it’s Friday night and the Ivory quad is hosting a little pre-game for some club. Cherokee’s friend from statistics class, Tania, knows club promoter who has, like, eight wristbands, so they shouldn’t use their fakes because Tania knows that Georgetown has been getting raided a lot by cops with big shiny badges. So those are the plans. Dave and Tim decide that this destination sounds like a place where a copious amount of single, liquored up women will be dancing the night away in short skirts, uncomfortable high heels and will be so sweaty they’ll desire twenty-dollar mixed drinks to keep themselves hydrated to dance more in a circle with their friends. Better options include drinking until loss of consciousness and a possible visit to everyone’s favorite hot dog vendor in front of CVS…so they decide to accompany their roommates. The pre-game is a mess because the men drink fourteen beers in the time that women take to get ready. But the women just used trash bags to slip into their dress – they can’t have those empty calories, so they have anywhere between one and twenty-seven shots followed by a chaser of a 7-Up or Coke Zero and everyone stumbles to a cab.
But, hold on, doesn’t this just sound like a typical night of men and women intermingling together for a club? Can’t the differences just be overlooked, as they are every weekend?
Unfortunately, no they cannot. The very same night Dave brings a woman, Starlet, a real class act, home with him. After he finishes talking very politely to her and massaging her feet arches for thirty or so minutes, he exits his room, possibly nude, only to find Ciara and Cherokee have returned with a collection of ten or fifteen girls to eat baked ziti around a kitchen table and watch reruns of Gossip Girl (because Chuck Bass is so hot right now). Dave gets upset, the girls end up dropping their pasta, Cherokee yells at Dave for being so inconsiderate and wasting good ziti because she just watched a documentary on Africa in her geography class and there’s like, starving kids there, or something.
This marks the end of the hypothetical situation.
2. Cherokee will want everyone to pitch in to donate a goat to the African children she watched the documentary on. Which is considerate and all, but, let’s be real, I won’t pay fifty dollars for a goat that I won’t get to ride.
3. Another factor that would contribute to the male and female inability to coexist in the same room would be the bathroom situation. I went into a woman’s bathroom once and everything was color-coded and all goods not cemented to the floor were lovingly placed into a plastic basket from Bed, Bath & Beyond. Not to mention how sanitary everything was…yuck. A man will compile as many things around his sink as humanly possible, possibly lose three or four toothbrushes in areas not to be ventured by anyone except maybe the Guatemalan room cleaner that will scrub up after we all depart for the summer. So the conflict comes when a man chooses to use the female bathroom since it’s closer to the dinner table and whatnot and ends up using the soap dispenser incorrectly (not a joke, some women are very adamant about the amount of soap you should use, how you should wash the bubbles down and residue left on the nozzle).
4. Use of the kitchen. Let’s be real, the only reason I use my stove is to have a place to put the empty Domino’s pizza boxes. Women cook, I think…or eat at Chop’t.
5. Men and women who date still like their own space. Sure, she’s a terrific girl and makes dynamite linguini, but if I have to listen to her talk to her friends about how stupid I am every day, I might as well move back home and listen to my mother tell me how stupid I am.
6. Lifetime television. A misogynistic garden gnome rapes Meredith Baxter Birney. Enough.
7. I can only handle so much T-Swift.
8. For the twentieth time, no I will not get matching heart tattoos with you…a flaming skull, maybe. Wait, can the heart be on fire?
And that’s basically it. If you’re living in gender neutral housing next year, the most sincere and best of luck to your room and well-being. I hope you don’t see anything that will haunt you for the remainder of your days.
And to those living with your “bros” or your “girls”: way to be unoriginal and unadventurous. I admire and respect your decisions. Save the adventurous decisions for when you’re face to face with a briefcase full of stolen, unmarked bills.