Framed on the wall at Potbelly Sandwich Works is a Life Magazine cover depicting a college-aged couple holding hands in a loveseat, looking endearingly into each other’s eyes with an alluring caption that reads, “Co-Ed Dorms: an intimate revolution on campus.” The faded cover ran November 20, 1970, when college students were protesting an unpopular war and Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” was the top song on the airwaves. Now, nearly 40 years later, when college students are again protesting an unpopular war (though with less vigor) and Akon’s “Don’t Matter” dominates radio play, another intimate revolution may be hitting the campus.

Tonight, the Residence Halls Association will vote on a resolution to allow mixed-sex apartments on the campus. Don’t pack your bags just yet, though. If the resolution passes the RHA, it would still need to run the gamut of approvals from the Resident Life department, the University Senate, University President Dan Mote and the Board of Regents.

Mixed-sex housing is overwhelmingly supported by students: The RHA sponsored a survey last semester that found 77 percent of students would prefer to live in such housing. I’m supportive of the resolution because it is one of the few campus issues where a student group has done its homework and has an accurate gauge of student support for a policy change.

I also believe the campus should serve as a sort of “real world with training wheels.” Most housing arrangements in non-academic settings are mixed-sex, and allowing students more freedom to choose with whom they live would enable them to carefully consider and make long-term decisions.

In addition to my support for the resolution, I have a few concerns. The survey found 36 percent of students would refuse to live in a mixed-sex apartment with shared bathrooms. At first glance, this doesn’t seem like too big a deal, but the university’s housing waitlist hasn’t been this long in 20 years, so some students who would have an opportunity to live on the campus in the status quo could presumably be forced to choose between living with a member of the opposite sex and moving off the campus.

For some, the issue is not merely living with icky boys: Many religions require modesty in relations between sexes, so such students would truly be disenfranchised by the policy change. Orthodox Jewish students at Yale University even threatened their school with a lawsuit because they were forced to live on the campus in mixed-sex dormitories. While the situation might not be as dire here, it illustrates the importance of religious inclusion in housing policy.

As a resident assistant in South Campus Commons, about a third of the roommate conflicts I’ve dealt with are related to couples issues. Though I trust college students to make their own decisions, mixed-sex apartments would inevitably create situations where couples decide to take the plunge and sign a binding contract forcing them to live together for 12 months, only to break up two months into it.

Tough luck for those folks, huh? Right, but Resident Life seeks in its mission statement to provide an environment advancing student development and academic excellence. This would be impossible in an apartment mired by relationship issues and would not only affect the people in the broken relationship but the roommates as well.

Regardless of where you stand, if you care about the fate of on-campus housing, head over to the RHA meeting tonight at 7 p.m. in the Prince George’s Room of Stamp Student Union to participate in the discussion or just to watch democracy in action.

Benjamin Johnson is a senior physics major. He can be reached at katsuo@umd.edu.