Coed living not for college campuses

I am a graduate of THE Ohio State University, a fact of which I am very proud regardless of the outcome of the last two college football national championship games, both of which the Buckeyes lost.

Some pollsters have Ohio State ranked as the preseason favorite to win the college football championship again this coming year. Maybe the third time's the charm.

But Ohio State has more than football going for it. One of the largest land grant universities in America, Ohio State had more than 52,500 students enrolled at its main Columbus, Ohio, campus at the beginning of the 2007 school year, a number larger than 97 percent of the incorporated jurisdictions in the United States.

Because of its huge size, the consequential large numbers of Ohio State graduates every year pepper America with good, old Midwestern, corn-fed, corn-bred values.

Well, I'd like to think so.

Unfortunately though, Ohio State has been at the leading edge of ill-advised social experimentation, a fact of which I am not so proud.

In the late 1960s, two new dormitories were built at Ohio State. These dorms, towering, 26-floor behemoths built in typical 1970s architecture, were the tallest structures on campus. They stuck out like sore thumbs.

They were distinctive for more than their size. It was decided that these new dormitories would be the first coed dorms on campus, at worst an immoral idea, at best a controversial one.

Prior to these facilities being built, dorms were single-gender buildings at Ohio State, staffed with security to control visitors and to enforce curfews and other rules intended to separate the inevitable results of students' raging hormones.

The dormitory buildings were named the Lincoln and Morrill Towers after the 16th president of the United States and Vermont Congressman Justin Morrill.

In 1862, Morrill sponsored a bill to establish land grant universities. Lincoln signed it.

The establishment of land grant universities offered the promise of higher education for millions of Americans who otherwise could not afford a college degree at the, then, sole private institutions of higher learning.

Morrill's bill and Lincoln's signature fulfilled that virtuous promise.

Yet this noble, visionary and successful act by the namesakes of the new dorms at Ohio State was trivialized by the scandalous decision to make the dorms coed.

Ohio State leaders could easily have assigned one of the twin buildings as a male-only dorm and the other as female only.

In the late 1960s at Ohio State, though, Haight-Ashbury, dope smoking, free sex and social experimentation won out over raging hormone realities.

So while still officially named Lincoln and Morrill after honorable men with salutary goals, these two dorms, because of the decision to make them coed, were most commonly called "Sodom" and "Gomorrah" after the Old Testament cities destroyed by God for their sinfulness.

As a result, the historical and strategic importance behind the twin towers' real names was lost.

Instead of an opportunity to teach, Sodom and Gomorrah at Ohio State became opportunities to snicker and jeer at the sins obviously going on inside them.

Snickering aside, even the Lincoln and Morrill Towers had some controls back then. Each of the 26 floors in these identical twin buildings was intended to remain single gender.

The floor plans were designed as pods containing a central living room surrounded by sleeping areas and a shared bathing and toilet facility. The pods themselves were neither designed nor conducive to coed living - at least not the late 1960s.

Ohio State's social experiment with coed dorms was bad enough. Many colleges followed Ohio State's (so-called) leadership and today coed dormitories are the rule rather than the exception.

As a result, at least partly, the feminine mystique is gone along with chivalry, good manners and feminine modesty.

Now, the Associated Press is reporting that at least 24 colleges - including Brown University, University of Pennsylvania, Oberlin College, Clark University and the California Institute of Technology - are permitting their students to share a room with anyone they choose, including roommates of the opposite sex.

It's not about the sex, according to the schools. Students so shacked up say they turn their heads when the other is dressing. It's about feeling "compatible," they say.

Right. Compatible. If you believe that, I have a farm to sell you with good, old-fashioned Midwestern corn-fed and corn-bred value.

The third time may be the charm for Ohio State football this season. But the Sodoms and Gomorrahs spawned in Columbus and subsequently peppered across the nation by Ohio State's coed dorm social experiment - sunk predictably even lower to coed living in dorm rooms now - is not a charm in the least.

In fact, it's a shame worthy of Buckeyes lowering their heads, averting their eyes and, yes, snickering.

Barry Fetzer is a retired Marine whose column appears in the Havelock News every other week.