“Go find someplace else!”

A perfect example about the distinctions I was trying to make in my last entry: A friend recently came to me with a story about how last week she found two people in her bathroom having sex in a stall. Not only were they having sex at 10:30am in the middle of the week, but they were also being very loud. When she entered the bathroom, she too tried to make as much noise as possible to alert the couple to her presence, but she actually had to walk over to the stall and bang on the door before they would stop. This is the kind of behavior I am addressing in this blog. Why would anyone want to be so public with an act that is traditionally so private?

I have one last story before I start exploring other research outside of personal narratives.

***
There is Boy1, Boy2, and Boy3, all living in a triple. Boy1 and Boy2 are good friends, while Boy3 is an outcast in his own room. Boy1 continuously has sex with his girlfriend inside the room in the middle of the night while he thinks that his roommates are sleeping. Little does he know, they are, in fact, NOT sleeping, and perfectly aware of his escapades. After Boy3 filed a complaint, a member of Residential Life sits down with Boy1 and tells him that he can no longer have sex while his roommates are present. He is told to either find someplace else, or ask his roommates for a little bit of personal time in the room. Boy1 assures everyone that it would not happen again.

Meanwhile, The Girlfriend is living in the triple with the three boys. Boy1 is told that she has to move out, and he agrees that she will, but of course she never does. They stop having sex late at night for a little while, but after a couple weeks it starts back up again, gradually getting louder and louder every time.
***

When I first came across this story, my first instinct was to write it off as just someone making an honest mistake while trying to hide a necessary part of their life. However, because these incidents never actually stop, it could indicate that Boy1 not only threw away the wishes of his roommates, but he seems to become more and more comfortable with these situations as time goes on.

Another thing that I find interesting is that, while talking with others, people seem to be more appalled at the behavior of The Girlfriend than of Boy1. As a society, I think that we (as stereotypical as it may sound) assume that men have sexual needs and that they will do almost anything in order to sustain…even if that means having sex in front of their roommates. On the other hand, women are supposed to be able to control their sexual urges; they are seen as being more sexually conservative and it is surprising to people (myself included) that any woman would want to have sex in front of two other (uninterested) men.
This is an issue I think I will carry onto other entries in this blog.

One last element that I think should be brought to the table is, if it’s not appropriate to have sex in front of roommates, in public bathrooms or showers, or other public spaces, where should college students have sex? Obviously the ideal place is in one’s own room without any roommates present. But it just seems a little contradictory that we tell students to “go find someplace else,” while at the same time listing all of the places they cannot go. It is not surprising that you often hear stories (or at least I have) of teenagers in particular having sex in ridiculous places such as on playgrounds or in baseball dugouts.

Although I have provided mostly generalizations and case studies so far, in the second half of this blog I will examine more articles and other research involved in these topics to help answer the questions posed throughout this blog.