Students Are Old Enough To Decide Pro-Guests University Should Teach, Not Moralize.

You’re 18. Technically, an adult. You can vote, buy cigarettes, be tried as an adult if you commit a crime. You can serve, fight and die for your country.

But don’t even think about having a sleepover in your dorm room at Washington State University. That’s a no-no.

Because even though you’re grown up, by society’s definition, even though you’re paying $2,161 a year to live in the dorms, WSU doesn’t like the idea of sex between the hours of 2 a.m. and 6:30 a.m.

They won’t say that’s their real worry; they point instead to other, more fuzzy problems. But WSU isn’t worried about marauding moms tearing up dorm rooms during Mom’s Weekend. It’s not combating a chronic problem of out-of-towners squatting at their friends’ new digs. The subject of fire codes - maybe the one reasonable argument against visitors - hasn’t even come up.

No, the university is trying to preserve some warped sense of respectability, trying to avoid the raging calls, letters and e-mail from parents who don’t like the idea of their children growing up, trying to instill morality when its mission is education.

WSU is the only public college in the state that doesn’t allow overnight guests, despite a yearlong campaign by students for change.

Officials say there’s no consensus on visitors, but students say the difference of opinion is between administrators and regents, who don’t discuss the issue, and students, who roll their eyes at the juvenile policy that’s largely ignored.

There are compromises. Other universities were smart enough to figure that out. The University of Idaho allows guests if a roommate approves. Guests can stay at an Eastern Washington University dorm for up to three nights after signing in. Dorm dwellers at the University of Washington can have a guest for three consecutive nights or a total of seven per semester.

WSU could look at any of these more reasonable policies, or create its own. Designate certain dorms as no-guest zones. Create a complaint system for roommates of habitual bunkers. Set limits, but face reality.

College is more than getting a degree; it’s independence. It’s a time to learn and grow and mature, socially. If students’ parents have done a good job before shipping them off to school, they’ll make the right ones - policy or no.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view, see headline: Ban on guests protects students

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