University of Virginia Library

College Life

We were highly amused by State Senator
Herbert H. Bateman of Newport News, who,
it should be remembered, charged on the
floor of the state Senate Monday that sex
among students at the state's colleges and
universities has "gotten out of hand."
Dormitories have become "bawdy houses"
with students dating in each other's
bedrooms, sharing the same bathrooms, and
spending nights together in the dormitories.
The Senator said that if the situations he
noted could be proven, the state's attorney
general has told him that college
administrators could be prosecuted for
"keeping a bawdy house."

What is not so amusing is that Senator
Bateman is serious. He apparently is
convinced that at colleges and universities
around the state there is a "serious" problem.
He has introduced a resolution to give college
administrators more control over dormitory
visits by members of the opposite sex.

What Senator Bateman is doing is
needlessly alarming a lot of parents and trying
to exert control over an area in which he, and
anyone else, really has no control. If Mr.
Bateman succeeds in keeping the boys and the
girls apart in the dormitories, they will simply
go elsewhere to "share the same bathrooms at
the same time."

A look around this school, which we
suppose is fairly typical with regard to
relations between the sexes, does not uncover
a situation "out of hand." Perhaps the
Senator meant VCU, VPI, Old Dominion, or
other state schools. He did mention a
dormitory house mother who had threatened
to quit her job because she did not want to
serve "as madam of a house of ill repute."
There are, of course, no dormitory mothers
here. We suspect however that other schools
are no different than our own in this area.
That leads to the interesting question of just
what the Senator considers to be "out of
hand" sex.

The current generation is no more
promiscuous than others which have preceded
it. It just doesn't bother to cover up some
activities which it considers normal, that is all.

Senator Bateman would do well, we feel,
to tackle vices which can be controlled. To
launch an attack against something which he
can really not stop is hypocritical and will
only make a lot of people miserable.