Banzhaf, Catholic University Officials Try to Hash Out Same-Sex Dorm Complaint

In a closed mediation session held at the D.C. Office of Human Rights last week, Catholic University officials met with George Washington University Law School professor John Banzhaf to try to resolve Banzhaf's recent complaint concerning the university’s newly enforced same-sex housing policy.

Public interest law professor Banzhaf in June announced he was preparing to file a formal complaint against Catholic University President John Garvey, claiming that the school's same-sex housing policy violates the D.C. Human Rights Act because the dorms segregate people by gender.

“I maintain that you can no more have separate dormitories for men and women than you can have parking lots, laboratories or classes; you can’t have calculus for men, calculus for women,” Banzhaf said.

“Another way at looking at it is if Catholic University, for example, decide that they could reduce tensions on campus by putting Jews in one dormitories and Muslims in another,” Banzhaf added. “I think simply asking that question, answers it.”

Garvey announced in June that Catholic University would change back to single-sex housing after more than 25 years of mixed-gender dorms, in part as an effort to curb binge drinking and sexual relationships between students.

Catholic University spokesman Victor Nakas said the university is not worried about the complaint because the school is “well within the law.”

The closed-door mediation session took place Aug. 15.

Both parties signed a confidentiality agreement concerning all matters discussed at the session, and declined to discuss what transpired.

Banzhaf said he will file similar complaints against The Most Rev. Allen Vigneron, Archbishop of Detroit, as well as The Most Rev. Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, D.C., both of whom hold positions at the university.

By LeighAnne Manwarren

Comments

[Darren McKinney]

With reports of forcible rape up 25% in D.C. over the past year (see today's Washington Post), and amid mounting and widely reported feminist protests about date rape and sexual harassment on college campuses nationwide, hyper-litigious gadfly John Banzhaf really ought to seek another means by which to grope feverishly for media attention.

Darren McKinney
American Tort Reform Association

[Roland Arals]

I am not sure what difference it makes. You are likely to find bisexual, gay, and lesbian roommates creating the same situation CU was trying to avoid.

[Michael Caldwell, CU ' 68, ' 71]

Professor Banzhaf's position is typical of so many liberal ideas: It is based on theory divorced from human experience. There are many practical reasons supporting the gender separation in dormitories policy--including issues of privacy, safety, modesty, and acceptance of the idea that males and females really are different (except, perhaps, at GWU Law School where one can't tell the difference). Additionally, CU is a distinctly religious institution. It is a Papal-chartered Catholic University. There are rules that Catholics are required to follow. Catholic teaching is that sex outside of marriage is immoral, sinful and destructive. Catholic teaching is also that Catholics are to avoid, insofar as it is possible placing themselves in situations where they will encounter temptation to sin. Housing hormonally driven adolescents in the same dorm at an age when they haven't even fully developed their judgmental faculties, and where they cannot otherwise effectively be supervised is placing them in such situations. The fact that Professor Banzhaf doesn't share those religious beliefs, or that he considers them to be medieval, is utterly irrelevant.

[Tim Morgan]

Next: get rid of same-sex convents and monasteries. Equal gender altar-children.

Not sure what the Prof's standing is, other than "we're not gonna take this lying down."