Why Can't We Be Friends?

Yesterday I was watching Friends, one of my favorite television series, and it pained me that this scenario was pretty much impossible. Now I'm not talking about the great jobs, the great outfits or even the great apartments that they owned. What I'm referring to is the fact that guys and girls can be just friends.

I remember high school and my first year of college where I had equal guy friends and girl friends. It was refreshing! There was less cattiness and spending time with different groups of people with different interests kept things interesting.

My first year of college was at Colorado State University. And while I knew the college wasn't for me, they at least encouraged healthy opposite sex relationships. My sophomore year I moved to Minnesota to attend the University of St. Thomas. While it was a better fit for me academically and geographically speaking, it lacked something my public college had offered. At CSU I lived in the same hall, on the same floor, and even next door to guys. They saw us in our sweat pants, they saw us fight, they saw us sick and they saw us PMSing. It helped them understand females, and in all fairness, it helped us understand males. When I would get sick it wasn't my roommates or my suitemates that took care of me, it was Will and Todd, the two guys across the hall. They were both on the golf team and both transfers. They would periodically bring over otter pops, only the kinds I liked, already opened for me. Every time they went to the cafe they would bring up soup and crackers for me. They were great guys and I enjoyed my time with them. We discussed the weather, our hometowns, exes, it was an honest, healthy friendship. And I would say they were my favorite two people I met on that floor, just because I didn't expect to befriend them.

Fast forward a year and I'm at St. Thomas. I'm living in what alum call the virgin vault. When St. Thomas started it was an all boys school. When they finally allowed women to attend and live there, they were afraid for the women's safety. UST was one big frat house. To this day, men and women live in separate dorm halls. There are visitation hours. Even the two on campus apartments the floors are all boys or all girls. Which I never understood because there were a few handicapped males in wheelchairs who had to live on the second floor. In the case of a fire emergency that would make it difficult to get downstairs. But what do I know? In terms of male-female relations, I don't believe St. Thomas promoted healthy views of the opposite sex. Women went to class in high heels, short skirts, dressed to the nines with make up done like they were about to perform on Broadway. It was a totally different experience that I think was actually a negative experience.

I found it more difficult to make male friends, and the ones I did were in the Air Force, meaning after graduation I'd probably see them on the rare occasion they got to come back home. Men had this skewered idea of what women are really like, it was bizarre and in my opinion unhealthy. I guess my question is why is it a sin for men and women to live on the same floor, even next to each other?

I know UST thought that if they allowed men and women to live on the same floor there would be promiscious sex everywhere. From my experience, no one on our floor 'hooked up' without forming a real relationship. We all were friends, made easier by the fact that there was testosterone there to balance out the estrogen. There were cliques and groups but I could go into any single room and hang out and talk with any one on my floor at CSU and enjoy myself. And I know that everyone else felt the same way. Unfortunately, I'm afraid my experience at UST was very different and not for the better.