The University of Arizona is considering offering students the option of sharing a dorm room with a member of the opposite sex, KVOA reports.
The plan under consideration would affect five of the university's dorms.
Already, about 50 colleges and universities across the country offer co-ed dorm rooms, including Stanford, Berkeley, Cornell, Dartmouth, Wesleyan and the University of Michigan.
The Sacramento Bee reported this summer:
"My main reason for choosing gender-neutral housing was simply feeling more comfortable with a guy as a roommate," Kendall Jones, 20, wrote in an e-mail interview with The Bee.
"Jones grew up with three brothers and said she was fed up with female energy after a freshman year in which she was one of three girls squeezed into a room built for two.
"It made me cringe to think about living with a girl the next year, so when I found out there was another option I jumped at the chance," she wrote.
Jones chose to live with her friend James Case. He said they were compatible because they have similar lifestyles and the same tolerance for mess. There was nothing awkward about it, Case said.
"When one of us would change, you'd say, 'Hey turn around for 10 seconds.' It really wasn't complicated," he said.
"College housing officials say mixed housing hasn't led to increases in sexual violence. Most schools limit mixed-gender rooms to specific buildings or floors. They assign students to mixed rooms only when both people request it."
- Mary Pasciak
E-mail me at mpasciak@buffnews.com or follow me on 
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