A Thinly Veiled Bias

In the wake of several acts of homophobia on campus, the Undergraduate Council has passed a bill condemning the current practice of allowing first-years to switch rooms if they feel uncomfortable living with a gay roommate. We join the council in urging the Freshman Dean's Office (FDO) to reconsider this policy, but not on the grounds that it veils some a deep-seated resentment towards homosexuals on campus. Rather, it is because, on a deeper level, the policy is antithetical to the fundamental educational mission of this University.

The FDO, by accommodating students' requests to be transferred out of living arrangements with a gay student, is ostensibly attempting to eliminate a potentially uncomfortable source of sexual tension. We hope that most students who request the change usually do not harbor negative feelings against gays in particular but rather feel somehow uncomfortable living with a gay roommate. The FDO, then, is merely alleviating a particular kind of discomfort.

Yet, the FDO would almost never give the same legitimacy to discomfort created on the basis of race or religion. Nor would they honor transfer requests solely on the basis of divergent academic interests or extracurricular pursuits. In many cases this discomfort is real and genuine. But FDO is right to intervene only if this discomfort should ever have dangerous consequences. We are not convinced that sexual orientation automatically creates such a danger.

If anything, this moderate discomfort is crucial to learning. Education--both academic and personal--is not a process by which we comfortably reaffirm our preexisting beliefs. Rather, learning stems from discomfort, from exposure to people who are different from ourselves. It is a process by which we test our personal truths against an array of competing beliefs.

Some students might genuinely feel uncomfortable living with a roommate who is gay. But that student should have the opportunity to use that discomfort as a learning experience. For the same reasons we promote religious and racial toleration, we cannot sanction the FDO's current policy towards gay roommates.

Conservatives, in all their syllogistic aptitude, might be quick to point out that if a student must room with a gay roommate, male and female students should also be forced to room together. And to some extent, there might be some truth to the claim. At many universities across the nation, male and female students successfully share rooming arrangements. Yale University has coed bathrooms in some dormitories. On campus, Quincy House allows coed rooming groups.

In the future, Harvard may wish to reconsider their policy on placing male and female first-years in the same rooms. But the task now at hand, however, is first to eliminate our misguided biases towards sexual orientation.

DISSENT: An Invasion of Privacy

The staff's position regarding the FDO's rooming policy springs from good intentions. It would be a great pity if the administration sanctioned the legitimacy of homophobic bigotry, and we concur with the staff's contention that much could be learned in gay-straight rooming arrangements. Indeed, we are in favor of any sort of FDO policy that would actively discourage first-years from switching rooms simply on the basis of a roommate's sexual orientation. But the board is misguided in pressing to categorically deny first-years with homosexual roommates the possibility of changing rooms.

The discomfort that some might feel living with a homosexual roommate is of a particular nature and must be distinguished from the discomfort experienced because of religious or extra-curricular dissimilarities. Many tolerant heterosexual men would not feel comfortable undressing in front of a woman--not because they hate women, and not because they think that all women are attracted to them, but simply because the possibility of that attraction is experienced as an invasion of privacy. Some might find those same sensibilities offended if they were compelled to live in close quarters with a homosexual, and the FDO should not peremptorily forbid rooming changes to those who find such a situation untenable.

The staff recognizes this line of argument, and its only response is to suggest that in some far away epoch, those mores that forbid mixed-sex rooming groups may also crumble. We would hardly applaud such a development. We cling to the out-dated belief that there are some rules of propriety that are, in fact, beneficial to society and the moral life of the individual. Those that protect basic considerations of privacy--the right to establish a sphere devoid of any calculations of sexual dynamics--are worthy of preservation.

We hope that increasingly few students take advantage of the option, but the FDO should maintain its current policy of allowing first-years to switch out of their assigned rooming groups if they so request.

--Noah D. Oppenheim '00

Nathaniel L. Schwartz '02