WASHINGTON (CNA) — The Catholic University of America plans to return to single-sex dormitories to reduce binge drinking and the “culture of hooking up,” university president John Garvey has announced.
“Next year all freshmen at The Catholic University of America will be assigned to single-sex residence halls. The year after, we will extend the change to the sophomore halls,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “It will take a few years to complete the transformation.”
The intellect and virtue are connected and influence one another, he said, and this means that colleges and universities should concern themselves with virtue as well as intellect.
“The goals we set for ourselves are brought into focus by our moral vision,” Garvey explained, deeming binge drinking and “hooking up” to be “the two most serious ethical challenges college students face.”
Nationally, more than 90% of college housing is now coed.
However, 41.5% of students in coed dorms report weekly binge drinking, compared to 17.6% in single-sex housing. Another 55.7% of students in coed housing report having had a sexual partner in the last year, compared to 36.8% in single-sex dorms. Students in coed dorms are more than twice as likely to have had three or more sex partners.
Garvey said it was no surprise sex is more common in coed dorms, but he expressed surprise about the drinking.
“I would have thought that young women would have a civilizing influence on young men. Yet the causal arrow seems to run the other way. Young women are trying to keep up — and young men are encouraging them (maybe because it facilitates hooking up),” he said.
The problems these create are also significant, Garvey reported.
Alcohol-related accidents are the leading cause of death for young adults 17-24. Binge drinking students are 25 times more likely to do things like miss class, fall behind in school work, engage in unplanned sexual activity and get in trouble with the law. These students also cause problems for others, including physical and sexual assault and property damage.
The effects of “hooking up” include a doubled rate of depression among young women, while sexually active young men do more poorly in their academic work.
“And as we have always admonished our own children, sex on these terms is destructive of love and marriage,” Garvey wrote.
Returning to single-sex residences will probably cost more money, the university president said, as there are a few necessary architectural adjustments and the university won’t be able to let the ratio of men and women vary from year to year.
“But our students will be better off.”
The university has proposed other changes in residency practices in its report on the application of Ex Corde Ecclesiae, Pope John Paul II’s 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic higher education.
Proposals include the conversion of two rooms in each residence hall into a residence for a priest or consecrated religious and the conversion of several rooms in order to add a chapel to each dorm.
The university notes in its report that all the proposals will require it to build more residence hall space and that it needs more funding to do so.
Other ways Garvey would like to increase the Catholic identity of the school include hiring more Catholic faculty members and building on-campus housing for priests pursuing graduate-level degrees.
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The proposal to have a priest or consecrated religious residing in each dorm is wonderful. Plus a chapel in each dorm? Awesome!
As a 1995 CUA grad who lived on-campus for four years in both mixed and single-sex housing, I am thrilled President Garvey is making these changes. Adding rooms in the dorms for a chaplain and consecrated religious, and a chapel, also will go a very long way to restoring Catholic identity and maintaining a spiritual presence among the undergraduate student body. Opposite-sex visitation rules also need to be enforced. In my day, I don’t recall seeing any sign of Catholicism in the resident halls. No crucifixes, no Mass offered, no chapel, no priest/religious—and plenty of hooking up, partying, and drinking, even in the only all-female dorm at the time (misnamed the “virgin vault”). I hope and pray President Garvey will remain firm and that students will stand by him. Students like myself who want to abide by Church teaching should feel welcome and supported at CUA, not isolated or in the “moral minority”.
At the risk of appearing stuffy, in the Catholic religion which existed up to 1960 (which is mine),“hooking up” was called fornication and was mortally sinful (one such deed could consign one’s soul to Hell if the actor died unrepentant). That is partially why the SSPX has no interest in “rejoining” the Church until it abandons the hermeneutic of discontinuity (he action at CUA is a positive step), and conforms to the hermeneutic of continuity which is what Pope Benedict is attempting to achieve. Of course, the institutional Church’s answer is: The 1960s made us do it.
In reply to Bill’s comment: I wouldn’t argue about whether fornication is a mortal sin. Several of our virgin-martyrs made the glorious decision to shed their blood rather than to allow themselves to be defiled in this way. It is important to remember, however, the subtler sins - the less “sexy” sins, the sins that good and pious people are likely to commit – other sins that can send us straight to Hell, as well: Some of these include neglect of the poor and the forgotten, pride, rash judgment, inordinate anger, vanity, useless quarreling, and a self-love that is willing to turn its back on the wounded and Crucified Christ and to enthrone one’s own vision of how the Church should be, in His place.
Does anyone imagine that the Evil One ever leaves off his temptations of faithful Catholics who are devoted to the older liturgical forms? While the sinners and tax collectors continue to struggle with their particular brand of falleness, those of us who have attained to what we hope are lives of pleasing the Lord, may yet founder in the port of safety if we leave off faithfully working out our salvation in fear and trembling, if we fail to be vigilant against our own special brand of “unsexy” temptations.
At the time of the dawn of the New Covenant, the religious and the civil leaders of the Jewish people had fallen away in many respects from faithful devotion to God, paying Him lip-service while their hearts were far from Him. Yet Zechariah and Elizabeth remained faithful to the temple worship in Jerusalem, unsatisfactory as it must have been to them, scandalous as the behavior of many of the hypocritical Pharisees and high priests was. God rewarded their fidelity with the birth of a man among men, John the Baptist. Similarly, Simeon and Anna, remaining faithful among so many who had fallen away from true worship were often nevertheless in the temple of Jerusalem imploring the Lord for the deliverance of Israel. And there, at that very temple, full as it was of misguided, mistaken, and hypocritical apostates, the Blessed Virgin Mary and her protector-spouse, the inestimable Joseph, presented the Infant Savior, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, to the Lord.
And after the Presentation, what did Mary and Joseph do? They went quietly home and cooked, cleaned, washed clothes, carried water, earned their living, praying quietly in their homes and enjoying recreation with their family and neighbors. And always attending services at the local Temple, which was one day to expel God Himself, and at the time of the Passover Feast each year, travelling to Jerusalem to worship, to the city which was one day to crucify God Himself.
Although surrounded by imperfect persons, many of whom had fallen away from true worship, Mary and Joseph always remained true to the worship of the Lord in the Temple and in their hearts. Their Son, Jesus, followed their example. Many faithful Catholics of our own time, would wish with all their hearts to spend their earthly existence in the sole company of angels and saints, if God granted them that Paradisical existence here on Earth. Alas, however, God has not granted this boon to most of us, and instead, invites us to pray and worship Him in the company of the less-than: less-than perfect, less-than holy, less-than righteous, less-than truly observant.
As Mary and Joseph did for most of their earthly lives. As Jesus did for most of His.
What a blessed gift! After all, what better company – what better example to follow - can there be?
notre dame has never had coed dorms.
the late bishop president david o’c
was too busy taking the oath against
modernism etc that he did not notice
that cua had coed dorms.
president garvey noticed. but, he
would. he is a graduate of notre
dame…
In the developed countries , in the name of progress and modernism opportunities for immorality is planted. I am unable to understand the weakness of catholic institutions in keeping the atmosphere more christian. The authorities are to be held responsible. Also the parents should ensure that the social condition in college and campus is good to live a christian life
I am thrilled that CUA is going in this direction! When my daughter was looking at schools a couple of years ago, we visited 3 different Catholic universities within 10 days—CUA was by far the most disappointing in regards to Catholic identity. Here’s hoping it is just the beginning of a wonderful turning for CUA.
Bill,
Who said fornication or hooking up is not gravely immoral? It is. I just wonder how you see an SSPX issue here? You must see them everywhere. That would be truly sad.
Kudos to CUA! More moves like this and it might even let one of my kids consider it in the next decade or so.
Bob, good news and bad news: hooking up is still fornication, but rebellion against the legitimate authority of the Church is still schism.
Both “such deeds could consign one’s soul to Hell if the actor died unrepentant.”
I’m surprised that this Catholic University allowed co-ed dorms in the first place!
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