Morality, Responsibility, and the University: Studies in Academic Ethics

10. Beyond in Loco Parentis? Parietal Rules and Moral Maturity

10 BEYOND IN LOCO PARENTIS? Parietal Rules and Moral Maturity David A. Hoekema The Housing and Residence Life program of the University ... is designed to be an integral part of students' educational experience. Its primary focus is student development in a collegiate educational environment.... While Housing and Residence Life staff members assist students in this developmental process, they do not assume the role of parents. With the advent of right-to-privacy legislation, the 'in loco parentis' concept has faded from college campuses. -Residence Halls Handbook, 1988-89, of a state university There is a certain sort of privacy that consists not in being actually screened from others' view but simply in the practice of not looking. Privacy of this limited sort is familiar in public restrooms, locker rooms, and hospitals. When I was a college student, this kind of privacy-and no otherprevailed within a hundred-yard circle of the entrance to the women's residence halls between 10:45 and 11:00 P.M. on weekdays, 12:45 and 1:00 A.M. on weekends. Dozens of couples could be espied bidding fond farewells on the steps, along the porch railing, and among the low bushes about the entrance. The attentions mutually bestowed ranged from hasty kisses to entanglements whose complexity was limited only by the necessity of being fully and more or less plausibly clothed for the quick dash inside just before the doors were locked. Or so it seemed. No one paid attention to what others were doing, since the aversion of eyes was the only privacy available. 177 178 I DAVID A. HOEKEMA The scene I describe will strike most contemporary college students as an exotic vignette from a far distant time and place. The distance is not in fact very great: it was just twenty years ago, at a middle-sized church-related college, that I dated a woman who lived in a residence hall and became thoroughly familiar with the many restrictions under which she lived. Along with knowledge of the parietal restrictions, of course, went knowledge of how to evade them from time to time-of doors sometimes propped open after hours, of resident advisers who might be corruptible, even, for the more daring, of overnight leaves ostensibly to visit a nearby aunt. The restrictions on the domestic and amorous life of college students were numerous, and infractions were dealt with sternly: disciplinary hearings and anxious correspondence between deans and parents usually ensued. For the college still purported to stand in loco parentis. Parietal rules gave concrete expression to parents' demand that the college be no less firm and directive a parent than they. Today, at the same college, all restrictions on student hours have been eliminated. Women's residence halls are still locked during the night for safety, but residents carry keys. Still, at this institution, visitation hours for men in women's residence halls and for women in men's residence halls remain very limited. Visits are permitted only on weekend afternoons and evenings, and only with the door ajar. Limited visitation hours now seem a relic of the dark ages to many students at state universities. Even separate men's and women's residence halls are disappearing, along with the often discriminatory rules that governed them. Nearly every campus offers coeducational accommodations, with men and women on alternating floors or in alternating rooms. On many campuses complicated roommate swaps are arranged informally, permitting students to take up housekeeping with boy friends or girl friends. In coeducational residence halls restrictions on visitation are nearly impossible to enforce, and both students and university administrators seem relieved to see them go. There was an anachronistic quality about the controversy that erupted recently not only on campuses but on television talk shows over a proposal at Boston University to limit outside guests in residence halls to weekend evenings, to require roommate approval for any overnight guests, and categorically to prohibit overnight guests of the opposite sex.1 Student demonstrations and editorials berated the university administration for this "insulting and offensive" policy, and a poll conducted by the student newspaper found 95 percent of students opposed to the restrictions, 4 percent in favor, and 1 percent Beyond in Loco Parentis? I 179 indifferent. (So much for the alleged indifference and apathy of contemporary college students.) The controversy at Boston University had at least as much to do with academic and cultural politics...