A plea for parietals at Georgetown
Blake Roberts
The Hoya
The moral life of [Georgetown's] campus is in crisis. The Catholic identity of our great university is threatened. John Carroll shudders as he looks down upon what has come of his once great college. Ever since the end of the '60s, when females were first admitted to all fields of study to this once holy campus, our hilltop has become a den of iniquity and fornication.
All the while, the administration insists on teaching students "moral responsibility." Hogwash. It's time to reclaim the Georgetown that once was. It's time to reassert our Jesuit identity. It's time for parietals.
While it may be too late to kick women off campus, it's still possible to kick them out of dorm rooms when it gets too late. Parietals would limit the hours students could spend in the on-campus room of a member of the opposite gender. For example, from Sunday to Thursday, male students could not be in a female student's room after midnight. On Saturday and Sunday, students would have to leave at 2 a.m., preventing the otherwise promiscuous youths from shaming themselves and Georgetown.
I know that you're thinking — "This utopia of collegiate virtue could never exist." But you're wrong. It already does. You'll find such a haven for chastity in South Bend, Ind., home of Notre Dame, America's highest-ranked Catholic university. Apparently, U.S. News & World Report thinks parietals are a good idea too.
At that virtuous academy, the administration has wisely decided to side with prudence and orthodoxy, unlike the loose and liberal DeGioia-Gonzalez team we've been cursed with. Intent on destroying the Catholic identity of Georgetown, this dubious duo has repeatedly failed to respond to student demands for parietals.
But back to Notre Dame. If you ask any student there about the effect of parietals on hooking up, you won't get an answer. You see, in innocent South Bend, they don't even know what "hooking up" is.
The parietals policy has so effectively molded the moral beliefs of Notre Dame students that they can't even comprehend the vocabulary of our illicit culture. And Notre Dame isn't the only Catholic school that holds true to the faith; Providence College in Rhode Island is another school that has parietals. No fornication there, either.
Put down those transfer applications; I'm not trying to make you envious of our peers at real Catholic schools. I'm just attempting to show that parietals can happen at Georgetown. This isn't just an impossible dream — if students band together and fight, we too can replace our personal responsibility with administrative rules.
Parietals would do more than just radically diminish the level of undergraduate sexual indecency on campus, they could address other issues Georgetown faces. Who needs to worry about the unavailability of condoms on campus with the unavailability of the opposite sex created by parietals? STDs on campus? No longer a problem. Instead of fighting about whether to teach safe sex, there will be no sex. Elaborate Catholic teachings on sexuality? Why bother when coercion is an option? Student pregnancy? Highly unlikely with parietals in effect. Study habits? Dramatically improved without the tempting distractions of the flesh. And last of all, drinking: if you know you can't be in someone else's room after 12 a.m. or two a.m., you've got to make some hard choices between vices. Either way, the level of immorality on campus will plummet. All because of parietals.
Still unsure about whether or not you support parietals? Consider their effect on your moral development: no more "discerning" what's right, no more relying on your "will" to do what you think is good, no more hard thinking about complicated and difficult issues. Just follow the rules. It's so much simpler. Who said being moral had to be hard work?
Let's hope and pray that our liberal administration finally decides to return to the flock by instituting parietals like they have at real Catholic schools. No more of this nonsensical reliance on educating the individual to make informed and responsible choices — let's have some institutional rules, then we'll be Catholic.
This column first appeared Jan. 11, in the Georgetown university newspaper, The Hoya. It appears here courtesy of U-Wire.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Wednesday, January 16, 2002
