Amazing - St. Anselm moves to co-ed dorms
By JOHN WHITSON
New Hampshire Union Leader Staff
16 hours, 55 minutes ago
MANCHESTER - For the first time in its 118-year history, St. Anselm College will offer male and female students the option of living in the same dormitory.
Administrators at the Benedictine college say bulging enrollment the past several years has left few logistical options and, mirroring a national trend, more females than males are enrolling.
Next fall, three dorms "Brady Hall, St. Mary Hall and Building M" will be home to both men and women, affecting about 160 students, or a 10th of the students living on campus.
"It gives us some flexibility," said the Rev. Jonathan DeFelice, St. Anselm president.
The change, which was announced last month in a letter from DeFelice to alumni and students, is getting mixed reviews on and off campus.
"This is just one more way St. Anselm capitulates to secular demands," said Elizabeth Pietropaoli, a theology teacher at Trinity High School who graduated from the college in 2001.
Pietropaoli said the move to co-ed dorms is another step down a "slippery slope" that would change St. Anselm from being a Catholic college to being "a college that teaches in the Catholic tradition."
It's no small distinction to Pietropaoli. "They're trying to downplay their Catholic identity," she said.
DeFelice rejects that notion, saying the college will maintain the same rules on visitation even within co-ed dorms.
"This is doing nothing at all to damage our identity as a Catholic institution," he said.
Kathleen Reilly, a senior, said she wishes the housing change had been made years ago. Rules in place now, she said, restrict study time as well as socializing, and often the best study partner for a class is a member of the opposite sex.
Tom Gunning, a junior, endorsed co-ed dorms as a mechanism to bring his own gender into line.
"In an all-boys dorm, it kind of gets out of control," he said.
DeFelice said the housing switch isn't all about logistics. The ability to offer more socialization options, in part to combat what Gunning describes, played a role in the move, said the president.
"It's something that's been in the works for a very long time," he said.
Opposition to the move, said DeFelice, has amounted to a silent minority. After sending out 18,000 copies of his letter announcing the change, about a half-dozen people have responded and no one has come to his office for a discussion, he said.
But Mark Grasso, a freshman who opposes the change, said if enrollment is so strong, the college should have planned better and built another dorm. With the past two classes and the next all numbering well over 500 students, "the problem's not going to go away," he said.
"I'm not sure the motives for this change are what they're saying they are," added Grasso.
The administration's reasoning doesn't add up for Kyle Montgomery, either.
If strict visitation rules remain in place, wondered the senior, how will living under the same roof affect socialization skills?
"There's plenty of opportunities for socialization" on campus without sharing a residence hall, said Cara Hanscom, a senior, having lunch on campus recently with Montgomery.
Another senior at their table, Rebekah Joseph, said she sees the housing change, no matter how small, affecting outsiders' attitudes. "I'm worried about the image of the college," she said.
Joseph Horton, vice president of student affairs, emphasized that while men and women will be living under the same roof, the arrangement will resemble an apartment complex, with separate locked entries to single-sex living quarters.
St. Anselm has maintained single-sex residence halls longer than most schools.
Richard Yanikoski, president and CEO of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, said the vast majority of all types of schools now offer some form of co-educational living.
"Maybe for (St. Anselm) it was a point of distinction," he said.
Yanikoski, a former president of St. Xavier University in Chicago, which offers co-ed housing, said it's difficult to find a Catholic school that doesn't.
Brian Flaherty, a 1998 St. Anselm graduate, laments the loss of that distinction.
"St. Anselm," he said, "has always been a place that bucked the trend. ... However, over the past 10 years or so, in an effort to be more competitive, they have hired a lot of people who seem more concerned about the college growing in prestige and less about the charm and Catholic character of the college."
Horton said rooms are assigned by a lottery process, with seniors' numbers picked first and freshmen last.
Although students weren't polled about the move this year, Horton said they were in the past and he suspects there will be enough interest in the co-ed dorms that no one will be forced to live there.
Harvard University is considering offering co-ed rooms as a housing option next fall, a move only a handful of institutions nationwide have made.
"That will not happen at St. Anselm," said Horton, "I can assure you of that."
DeFelice said next fall's housing changes are not the first in a series. "That is certainly not part of our plans at the moment," he said.
But that kind of assurance is too tepid and the changes already too great for alums like Pietropaoli.
"I teach seniors and I don't encourage any of them to go there," she said. "It's a good school, but I don't know what it's going to be like in 10 years."
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It's amazing people's reaction to this. Granted males and females will still be separated they just will be in the same residence halls, sort of like the upper and lower apartments.