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Co-ed dorms not a problem

To the editor,

I abhorred reading the comments by State Rep. Jean McGrath in Friday's Wildcat demoralizing co-educational dormitories. She sees these dorms as an "unnecessary distraction" and thinks that they encourage teenage pregnancies and welfare dependence. I don't think I have heard less factually-based statements in my entire life.

While I was an undergraduate at this university, I lived for two years in two different co-ed dorms on campus. Both of the halls I lived in were segregated; females and males lived in specific sections of particular floors or in one half of the dorm. Men used the men's bathrooms, and women used the women's bathrooms. Life in a co-ed dorm may not have been a walk in the park at all times, but I believe it taught me about the living habits of other people, including men. This was valuable life experience that I was very glad to have. At no time did I think that living in a dorm with members of the opposite sex was immoral. Ms. McGrath seems to only be thinking with her genitalia, not with her brain.

Not everyone in a co-ed dorm is sexually active with other dorm residents.

Single sex dormitories exist, like Coconino, Maricopa, Gila and Cochise, and are open to students wishing to live with people of the same gender.

Obviously Rep. McGrath did not consider the actions of homosexual students living in these dorms as immoral, although she was quick to condemn heterosexuals. If she fears teenage pregnancies and welfare dependence, she should champion wider distribution of contraceptives. Note that she doesn't see the spread of sexually transmitted diseases like herpes and HIV as a problem.

I urge students to e-mail Rep. McGrath at jmcgrath@azleg.state.az.us. State your opinion! Rep. McGrath is the chair of the House Public Institutions and Universities committee, and if our opinions are not presented to her, we just may find her right-wing, Puritanical beliefs becoming the norm on the campuses of Arizona's universities.

Kelly LeFevre

Plant Sciences graduate student