But dorm-room sex is just as challenging for the non-practicing roommate. Allow me to paint you a word mural:

You’re trekking home to your room after an excruciating night in the library. Your bed is calling your name from across campus, and it’s taking all of your energy just to make it back. Just as you are opening the door and can practically feel your blanket’s sweet embrace wrapped around your body, the familiar moans and grunts of your roommate and her ape-like boyfriend ring like fire alarms in your ears. Sexiled again.

You have two choices: Make your presence known and hope they cease and desist or opt for headphones and heavy metal. Or you can face your fate and spend the night tossing and turning on the cardboard-like couch in the lounge.

Well, if you’re a student at Tufts University, the weight of this hefty decision has been taken off your shoulders once and for all. Under a new ResLife policy, students are not allowed to engage in sexual activity while their roommates are in the room.

Personally, I think that Tufts is sticking its nose in business that should be discussed and decided between roommates themselves. Instituting a sex policy that is virtually un-enforceable seems a bit extreme. And unless the horny couple actually wants an audience to cheer them on, I think they would wait for privacy anyway, with or without the existence of a formal policy mandating it.

Common courtesy dictates that no roommate should have to be a witness to lovemaking that is not their own (unless, of course, they’re into that sort of thing), but I feel sorry for the freshman male who gets paired with a hermit roommate that never leaves the solitude of their room.  Soon dorm-room sex will be replaced with bumping uglies in the bushes and humping on top of the dining hall.

So Tufts, what is more disturbing? Public displays of fornication or a slight rocking from the top bunk? Instituting this sex-policy seems like a slippery slope. Next they’ll be outlawing co-ed sleepovers and issuing chastity belts. Stay out of my sex life, ResLife, and I’ll stay out of yours.

No one should be expected to sit in the library or stare at their dorm room walls every day of the week with their nose in a book. Everyone needs something that helps them unwind, especially on the weekends.

Sometimes finding something to do – especially on a campus where parties are a rare occasion -  is hard. I knew when I signed my life away as a Hollins woman, I was going to be living in Roanoke, Virginia,and that I wouldn’t have a big city as my playground on the weekend. I knew I wasn’t attending a huge state school where fraternity parties are the social factor and that club activities would be endless. As a prospective, I remember asking about the student life on the weekends only to hear the same fib that my fellow peers heard themselves as prospective students: “Don’t worry about it, you will always find something going on.”

Oh, but that is very far from the truth. Options on campus are very bleak. From the first weekend as a first year, I realized as no one was around on the weekends I would have to be entirely responsible for finding something to do Friday and Saturday nights. While not feeling bogged down by having too many social activities planned, I like that Hollins has a sleepy atmosphere (especially for those weekends I need to do a lot of work), but for the most part – I don’t understand why we can’t have some sort of decent entertainment when the weekend rolls around.

The social scene at Hollins on any given weekend can be summed up in three ways:

1) You leave on the weekends

2) You rely on an apartment party or a party hosted by NEFA (a specialty housing dorm)

3) You hope the Student Life/Activity Board has something planned

A huge chunk of the student body leaves on the weekend. Girls carpool for the entire weekend up to Hampden-Sydney, an all male college two hours away and sleep on random futons since making the drive back in one night is out of the question. If Hampden-Sydney isn’t someone’s bag, other colleges like Washington and Lee, Virginia Tech, and Roanoke College can be visited. However, if you don’t know someone who goes to those schools, good luck finding a party or meeting people. What does the rest of the student body do when they leave? They go home! Students who are from Virginia or even close cities in North Carolina find themselves frequently going home because of the lack of campus activities. The only time students make plans to stay is if a formal is happening, which only happens twice a year.

Occasionally an apartment party or a themed party through NEFA will happen, but the frequency of this is rare. Also, these parties aren’t for everyone. Many girls don’t feel comfortable going over to the campus apartments because they don’t fit the cliques that live in many of the apartments. NEFA, a housing dorm for the campus’ artsy folks, throws unique, unforgettable parties, but most of them are not for the faint of heart. What if you just want a small get together? What about a dorm room?

Parties in other dorms do not happen, whatsoever, which can be very frustrating. Say it’s 11pm on Friday and you want to “Just Dance” along with Lady Gaga and your two best friends? Good luck getting through the song before someone calls Campus Safety to complain and a knock from an officer interrupts you. Every hour in all the dorms seems to be quiet hour. Whenever students speak up about the lack of social atmospheres, the Activity Board usually says “We have monthly mixers with a DJ and we invite other schools” to combat the complaints, but it does not suffice when no one actually shows up to the poorly planned and advertised school sponsored parties.

For a small university, Hollins is very diverse in its beliefs and types of students. Regardless of the variety amongst us, I have heard over and over again that not enough is done on the weekends in order to give students something to do. Yes, Hollins shows a movie every weekend in the auditorium and they have a shuttle take students to the mall, movies, and Wal-Mart, but that is not enough. When over half of the campus departs on the weekend to other colleges or home, something more needs to be done. How can a campus have a close-knit community when everyone leaves by 2pm on Friday and returns by 6pm on Sunday?

I am not asking for endless activities on the weekend. I think that students should be responsible for coming up with something to do, but I do believe that the university should endorse a more sociable atmosphere. Whether that means allowing students to have dance parties at reasonable hours without getting campus officers sent up or providing well planned mixers with other colleges, something needs to happen in order to help the social scene from sinking even more than it continues to do so!

In asking for other opinions from students on campus, Hollins sophomore Jennifer Old sums up how actions should be taken on campus to improve the overall weekend situation: “I think people are hesitant about the parties and other social events held on campus. Parties are broken up much more quickly at Hollins and the threat of the Roanoke Police has become very real. As for the social scene outside of the party sphere, I think there should be a community forum every semester. HAB (The Activity Board) should hear the collective desires of the campus and cater to the diverse interests of Hollins women.”

Obviously a social environment is very important to college life. Now tell me, how do you spend your weekends? Do you think your college provides enough entertainment and amusement for students? What do you want more of in your school’s social scene? Dish – I want to hear what I’m missing!