They say we are given to experience God’s will only in very small ways.
Well, dude, I ain’t feeling it at all. I’m pretty sure, in fact, that the will of God is entirely absent from my Henle home. No, I have not found Jesus, and I doubt he would dare set foot in my apartment, for the good Lord would shudder at the crime against nature that is Georgetown’s housing arrangements.
Since time immemorial, first-year students have been stripped from the loving arms of their families (or, occasionally, flung violently, the brats) and sent into a small room furnished with a set of bunk beds, two desks and, most significantly, a roommate. Why do we have roommates? What the hell kind of purpose does this serve? Why do administrators hate us? Oh, no, you protest, having a roommate teaches valuable skills that will be important for coping with people later in life.
Ah, yes, certainly, when I graduate from college, the government will assign me to a work detail in another new part of the country where I will have to perfect my interactions with my bunk-mate comrades if we wish to make quota and not be whipped, then shot. No, hold up there. I was thinking of Stalinist Russia. This is America. At no point in our life would anyone EVER force us to share intimate living arrangements with unrelated people of the same gender. This has not always been the case historically, you may point out, as the Spartans practiced segregated communal living until the age of 45, but I’m sure you will agree that such an arrangement is as pass? as ritual female infanticide.
I realize that the founders of Georgetown thought that groups of students should live together in tight quarters and get along really well. Of course, they were priests. I’m not a priest. I understand that the Catholic Church would not let me be one even if I wanted to. Seriously, though, doesn’t the Church expound upon the individuality of the soul and the union of a man and woman as the perfect human existence? If people were meant to have the experience of communal living, we’d be born in litters like puppies, but instead many of us are only children with no experience sharing a room.
I think it makes our first year, already a time of much stress and anxiety, more taxing to our fragile sanity. We realize, subconsciously, that it’s unnatural. I know that the University fears premarital sex, but don’t you think that the reason a married couple is our national standard is that men and women living together works? If we can’t have singles, I’d rather live with a boy. It would be a modern day I Love Lucy, complete with separate beds and minus Little Ricky. In the morning, instead of ritually battling for use of the single electrical socket in the bathroom, I could spread my many sweet-smelling and brightly colored beauty products on the counter and take as long as I liked. I’ve seen many guys’ bathrooms, and there isn’t one that couldn’t benefit from a few Estee Lauder eye shadow accents. And give us some credit, administrator deities; given the option, most people would NOT choose to live with a sexual partner. Gays and lesbians at Georgetown have that option, and that none that I know of take it is a credit to the good sense of students in general. In fact, were I living with a man, the carnal studies in my apartment would decrease. While my current roommates would gracefully leave me and a male visitor alone, a male roommate would probably feel obligated to stare down the intruder and make awkward comments. Territorialism can work in your favor, Jesuits.
Sure, Jesus spent most of his time hanging with his all-male posse, but he also spent significant amounts of time with prostitutes, and I don’t see the University trucking them in for us so that our lives are more Christ-like. I either saw or just made up a study that shows that friction with roommates is the largest source of stress in a college student’s life. Moving from family to strangers is a transition we make only once in our life?unless you get sent to prison?and supposedly we compete to get here. If the University can’t offer singles, they should at least offer the option to move around at leisure, or live off campus. So please, God, Jesus, Jesuits, Juan-Gon?whoever reads these things?deliver me from this den of females, for here I fear evil, and the bathroom is full.
Laura Becker is a sophomore in the College and contributing editor of The Georgetown Voice. She will soon travel to South Dakota to hunt the glorious plummage of the elusive wild pheasant.
