Dorm Brothels
Is Promiscuity Obligatory?
By Mark Earley
Christian Post Guest Columnist

Fri, Aug. 11 2006 At Maryland's Loyola College, ethics professor Vigen Guroian was lecturing on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Students were comparing the novel – in which sexual promiscuity is required by law – with life in their own freewheeling dorms. Guroian pointed out the difference: Promiscuity on campus is voluntary, whereas in Brave New World, it's mandatory.

After class, a young woman came up to Guroian and told him he was wrong. Peer pressure and living arrangements on campus make promiscuity "practically obligatory," she said. "When it seems like everyone else is 'doing it,' it is hard to say no," she added. "It is more like Brave New World here than you think."

Guroian was not altogether surprised. He attended college himself in the late 1960s, when colleges gave up the responsibilities of in loco parentis. Up until then, separate dorms for men and women, along with stringent rules regarding visitors of the opposite sex, "made it possible for a female student to say 'no' and make it stick," he writes. While the rules were not always followed, they established the boundaries and norms of acceptable behavior. the rest