A growing trend among higher-education institutions to provide coed dorm rooms to its students is causing some to cry foul while universities cite changing times as the reason for allowing the shift.

At Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, university-housing policy allows males and females to share the same dorm rooms in university housing.

Tom Krattenmaker, Director of University Communications at Swarthmore, said the change resulted from a request by gay students.

“It originated with gay students who said there should be opposite-sex housing options for gay students who were uncomfortable living with somebody with the same sex because of the possibility of sexual tension or perhaps homophobia,” Krattenmaker said. “That is where it originated, but actually most of the kids who are in this housing now are straight, and they have chosen it mainly because they like living with people of the opposite sex.”

At many universities, male and female students have shared floors, bathrooms and living space for decades. Only recently have a few universities like Swarthmore twisted the norm to allow same-sex rooming.

Krattenmaker said when Swarthmore first enacted the policy, there was some debate from the outside community and alumni who thought the activity had hedonistic purposes. He said when they found out the full extent of the policy, their views on the matter changed.

“We’ve heard from a small number of older alumni and a few people in the general public who have interpreted this as cohabitating or shacking up — whatever you want to call it,” Krattenmaker said. “As soon as we tell people that these are all groups of three students or more and they are not romantic partners in any way, they usually are more accepting of it, so it hasn’t been too controversial.”

Krattenmaker added that only about 40 students at the university live in coed rooms.

Swarthmore is not the only college offering coed living. Other schools offering coed rooms include Antioch College, Ohio University and Haverford College.

Keiffer Erdmann, a student at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, said at his school there has been virtually no controversy over their move to coed living.

“It seems to be the direction that many colleges are looking into and going in, so I don’t think it’s much of a controversy as it used to be,” Erdmann said. “The outside community hasn’t said much about the policy. Parents sometimes have concerns, but it’s been pretty minimal.”

Wesleyan University offers a twist on the concept of coed living. Wesleyan offers apartment blocks on campus to university students, and while it does not assign rooms filled with members of differing genders, it does allow mixed-gender groups to sign up and move in together.

“We allow men and women to draw together into housing suites. We don’t actually assign them to rooms so there is the potential for young men and women to assign themselves within the group into on-campus housing units,” said Justin Harmon, Director of University Communications at Wesleyan. “You might have six seniors drawing together and it might be a coed group. There is the possibility that male and female could choose to occupy the same bedroom, but the university doesn’t assign them to the same room.”

While students and university administration seem to be content with their policies, a number of students as well as religious groups do not support the policies.

Christine Lysionek, manager of Villanova’s dormitories, told ABC there were a number of issues involved in coed housing.

“I think there’s privacy issues [with coed housing], there’s developmental issues, there’s educational issues,” Lysionek said. “We’re certainly not where Haverford is, nor would we ever want to be.”

While Lysionek said she believes there are a number of issues complicating coed living, Philip Ryken of the 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia said, in an editorial, by allowing coed housing, universities believe sin “doesn’t happen or doesn’t matter.”

“Apparently the college takes the view that sin either doesn’t happen, or doesn’t matter. Yet physical proximity often plays a significant role in sexual temptation,” Ryken said. “Haverford’s director of student housing is aware of this, but claims that most ‘students are smart enough to know that [living together] is not a good idea.’ If it’s not a good idea, then one wonders why the college allows it. It would be safer to assume that students are not smart enough to avoid temptation, and to set campus housing policy accordingly.”

Krattenmaker said the generation gap between today’s youth and yesterday’s alumni is the primary hitch causing older adults to question Swarthmore’s policy.

“I think one thing that older people don’t get is that with this generation, it’s no big deal to be around people of the opposite sex,” Krattenmaker said. “To talk to someone who went to college in the ’50s, they might think ‘Oh, my god, it’s temptation, you have girls and boys too close to each other.’ It’s really a generational thing.”

Although some members of the Swarthmore community have condemned the policy, citing hedonistic motives for students of the opposite sex to live together, Krattenmaker said none of the nearly 40 students living in coed rooms are in romantic relationships.

“There is a cultural taboo against having relationships with people on your own floor, much less your own room. Students call it ‘hallcest’ and it’s when you date somebody on your own floor and that’s really frowned upon here,” he said. “Because of the cultural norms, we haven’t really had any worry about people exploiting this [policy] to live with their boyfriend or girlfriend.”