Dorm damage?
Re “Ban dorms; they worsen inequality,” Opinion, July 28
The op-ed is earnest and funny. As a father, my take on college housing is to return to the good old days of single-sex dorms. This would protect delicate young ladies from hearing young men make dumb sexist remarks, and it would help sensitive young men from having to see young women in curlers and bathrobes.
Single-sex dorms would also allow both genders to be themselves without feeling self-conscious and without being afraid of being reported to the thought police. Thus the genders would be forced to meet in such secret places as the library. Heaven forbid!
Finally, single-sex dorms might encourage such dangerous activities as studying and maybe, just maybe, by being away from each other, the genders might learn to treat each other better. Mark Walker Chino Hills
The author proposes mixing elite students with young adults of varying backgrounds with the goal of exposing young Americans to others outside of their social comfort zone and economic class.
His model would require huge oversight and thousands of costly government managers. Actually, such a system is already in place and has achieved this goal for over 200 years: the United States military. Tom Garnett Santa Barbara
The author implies in his op-ed that it is “elitist” for Stanford (I am Class of 1980), Yale and Harvard to have their students somehow secluded in dorms with only their classmates.
I can assure the author that I, for one, was not and am not elite. Yes, I was a very good student. But I grew up in rural California where my mother was an elementary school teacher and my father a body and fender repair guy.
Then, all frosh were required to live on campus (a very good idea from the standpoint of learning about people who are different from yourself ), and in my coed dorm were many students who were some of the first in their families to attend college. And there were many of us who had to work while we attended school and who were also required as a part of our majors to work in the community.
Friedersdorf accuses universities of “having narrow interests.” Unlike the picture that he paints, dorms actually allow a life filled with diversity. Yvonne Randle Los Angeles
If the United States is really interested in giving elite students real-world experience, make dorms available courtesy of Uncle Sam.
As a veteran of the draft era, my outfit had college grads as well as a cross section of the rest of America.
Debate could get quite lively. David Strauss Arcadia