If you like to walk around naked after a shower, workout in your underwear or relax in your skivvies, then you may want to be sure you enjoy doing all of the above around the opposite sex. Over 30 universities around the country are breaking the mold and getting edgy by allowing male and female students to live and work together in the same dorm room.

Did anyone else’s brain just whisper the word “sex”? That seems to be the factor causing the most controversy with this new co-ed living situation. However, there are a lot more elements to be taken into consideration that make this idea feel like a step in the right direction.

This isn’t the first break in gender housing rules. Even now, some colleges don’t allow men and women to live in the same dorm building, let alone the same room. However, more college students of both genders are living as neighbors than 20 or 30 years ago.

Some people think allowing male and female students to live together is encouraging sexual behavior, but the sexual tension between college students will exist regardless of students’ locations.

People need to take a deeper look into the positives of what gender-neutral housing can provide, such as a more comfortable environment for some, or maybe an easier way to make friends.

Living with strangers is never easy, but it is part of the dorm experience. It allows us to branch out, forcing us to meet new people and make new friends. While some students braved the UNF campus alone, others migrated to Jacksonville with one, or even several people they knew prior to college. UNF gives students the option to choose their roommate, but let’s say you are a female that came to college with your best friend, only, he is a male. You don’t have the option of living together at UNF.  If UNF let them live together, it could change their entire college experience.

Another positive aspect of male and females living together, besides being able to live with a friend of another sex, is the varied lifestyles of males and females.  If nothing else, living with the opposite sex can give someone insights they might not otherwise gain.

Looking at this idea from all positions, we should ask why gay and lesbian students aren’t taken into consideration. It is just as likely that if a straight male student prefers to live with a female, that maybe a gay male student would prefer to live with a member of the same sex, as well. With gender-neutral housing, students are provided more alternatives.

The most important thing to remember about this gender-neutral housing is that it’s simply an option. If UNF were to offer this kind of dorm situation, of course students would still be able to choose to live with only the same sex if they prefer. However, giving them the freedom to choose whom they would prefer living with, whether it is the same of different sex, seems almost necessary.

Times are a-changin’, and while the move toward co-ed dorm rooms is slow in progression, gender-neutral housing is a step closer to sexual and personal freedom, and a society based on choices. This is quickly becoming a world where porn and tampons co-exist peacefully.