{"id":1324,"date":"2010-12-10T05:00:12","date_gmt":"2010-12-10T12:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=1324"},"modified":"2010-12-10T05:00:12","modified_gmt":"2010-12-10T12:00:12","slug":"g-w-u-radically-redefining-coed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=1324","title":{"rendered":"G.W.U. — Radically Redefining Coed"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The campus<\/a> of George Washington University must be an interesting place to be \u2014 and it looks like it may quickly become a lot more interesting.”\u00a0 Dr. R. Albert Mohler, <\/strong><\/em>“<\/strong>Coed Quarters & Free Birth Control\u2013The New Campus Culture?”<\/strong><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If past is prologue, then my undergraduate alma mater continues to be every bit as interesting as when I\u00a0arrived as a freshman\u00a0on the Foggy Bottom campus in the late summer of 1984.\u00a0 Although school officials — operating out of Rice Hall, named for\u00a0the Baptist pastor who founded Columbian College,\u00a0now known as the George Washington University —\u00a0did not move as quickly as Dr. Mohler seems to think, it’s only taken G.W.U’s dorm\u00a0policy around 22 years to catch up with the reality of\u00a0campus life\u00a0when I was a student\u00a0from 1984-88.<\/p>\n

As a somewhat naive Southern Baptist kid from a small town in central Florida, coming to the nation’s capital for my college education was a culture shock to say the least.\u00a0 With a love for politics and law (ministry was not even on my radar screen), G.W.U. was the perfect place to get an education in political science (Ronald Reagan’s second term), which in those days was known\u00a0as a\u00a0degree in pre-law or pre-unemployment.\u00a0 I chose the former.<\/p>\n

I knew that the living and learning environment in Washington, D.C. would be somewhat\u00a0different\u00a0from where I grew up — Lake Placid, FL — but no one could have prepared me for my first semester of college.\u00a0 I should have known that my life\u00a0would take an interesting\u00a0(to use Dr. Mohler’s word) turn\u00a0when one of the questions on my housing application was:<\/p>\n

“Do you prefer a roommate\u00a0who does not use illegal drugs?”\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My mother and I laughed as\u00a0I\u00a0checked “YES.”\u00a0 I wasn’t laughing for long when one of my roommates turned out to love to smoke pot.\u00a0 Lots of it.\u00a0 The bong, lying on the coffee table in plain sight the first time that my parents and I walked into\u00a0my dorm room, should have been a tip-off\u00a0had I known what a bong looked like and what it was used for.\u00a0 If it hadn’t been for my other roommate, Bob — who continues to be a good friend to this day — and my fraternity brothers at Phi Sigma Kappa, I would have never made it through my first year at George Washington.<\/p>\n

Even with the announced changes in GW’s coed housing policies<\/a>, I can’t imagine that life on\u00a0campus\u00a0is any more interesting today than it\u00a0was when I was a freshman living in a nine-story dorm named Thurston Hall.\u00a0 Going by my\u00a0middle name — Howell — at the time and with\u00a0my roommate — Bob —\u00a0hailing from Denver, Gilligan’s Island\u00a0became somewhat of a running joke.\u00a0 If you’re not old enough to\u00a0understand this classic television show reference, I’m truly sorry.<\/p>\n

In all but two of the dorms (Strong and\u00a0Calhoun)\u00a0during my days as an undergrad, the “official”\u00a0living arrangements were\u00a0“coed by\u00a0room,” meaning that only girls\u00a0could share a room or that only guys could share a room.\u00a0 However, with\u00a0girls and guys living in rooms next to each other or across the hall from one another, there was no shortage of unofficial\u00a0coed cohabitation.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to 2010.\u00a0\u00a0The George Washington University, founded by Baptist pastor Luther Rice (how ironic that I\u00a0graduated from a school\u00a0started by Baptists), continues to be an interesting place to be, but perhaps not how Rev. Rice and others envisioned it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr. Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (also my alma mater), who is a keen observer of culture, said this about G.W.U.’s decision to move toward gender-neutral housing:<\/p>\n

One shocking aspect of this development is moms quoted in the article who were all for the new policy. \u201cThe students need to learn how to make these decisions based on their own comfort levels,\u201d said on mom. Another mom said, \u201cThey\u2019re 18. We can\u2019t do much about it anyway, if they\u2019re away at school.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This\u00a0may be shocking to someone like Dr. Mohler, who was not a student at George Washington.\u00a0 As perhaps one of the few pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention who graduated from G.W.U., I wish that I could say that I am likewise shocked by the coed housing decision.\u00a0 I am not.\u00a0 In fact, when I saw a blurb on the Washington Post’s website the other day which read, “Area School To Allow Coed Rooms in Dorms,” or something like that, but which did not name GW in the headline, I knew before I clicked on the link that the story was about my alma mater.<\/p>\n

Dr. Mohler sums up well the situation on our nation’s college campuses, including George Washington University, when he writes:<\/p>\n

“In less than two centuries the school has modulated from Luther Rice to gender-neutral housing and demands for free birth control. The slide will not end here.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s not much more that a G.W.U. grad can say to the President of one of my other alma maters than a simple and hearty, AMEN!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The campus of George Washington University must be an interesting place to be \u2014 and it looks like it may quickly become a lot more interesting.”\u00a0 Dr. R. Albert Mohler, “Coed Quarters & Free Birth Control\u2013The New Campus Culture?” If past is prologue, then my undergraduate alma mater continues to be every bit as interesting…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[237,240,3373,323,329,423,439,467,627,778,919,1037],"class_list":["post-1324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-uncategorized","tag-coed-housing","tag-columbian-college","tag-culture","tag-dorms","tag-dr-r-albert-mohler","tag-g-w-u","tag-george-washington-university","tag-gw","tag-luther-rice","tag-phi-sigma-kappa","tag-southern-baptist-theological-seminary","tag-washington-d-c"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-lm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}