Campus Problems: Sex

Campus Problems: Sex
Private Issues and Public Problems
The wide range of behavior that is acceptable to today's college students stands in contrast to the unwritten codes of earlier generations. Perhaps nowhere is this more dramatic than in the area of sex.
The sexual standards on college campuses before the late '60s were, for the most part, clear-cut. The double standard operated: nice boys did, nice girls didn't. Women were supposed to ignore sexual longings. For them, the underlying message was, "Sex is dirty; save it for the one you love." There were accepted stages of courtship and dating, and although many deviated from the norm, the public stance of most college students was to follow the rules. And many rules there were. Women's dorms above the first floor were off-limits to the opposite sex. "Man on the floor" meant a father was carrying a heavy suitcase to his daughter's room. In men's dorms, women might be allowed to visit, but there were parietal hours and rules. The door to the room was to be left open no less than six inches. At midnight, droves of couples hid behind bushes in front of women's dormitories, or dashed from parked cars as housemothers flashed porch lights to signal the midnight curfew. And there were notorious rules on many campuses, though hardly anyone can actually remember seeing them written down, that when men and women were together alone in a room, each of them had to keep at least one foot firmly on the floor at all times.