When I started university last year seven years ago, the most exciting thing by far was the presence of boys. Having been embroiled in single sex education from the ages 4-18, the thought that I could walk past boys now on a daily basis, was too thrilling for words. (Imagine how thrilling life is now -- I can still walk past boys on a daily basis!) I loved that I could go to the library, ostensibly do some studying, even actually do some studying and I might see someone male. It wasn't even that I had to fancy them; just knowing that they were there was somehow illicit. I'd only ever seen boys at parties, or at the weekends. I'd never browsed the library with one (I wasn't in Dawson's Creek, sadly) or sat, biro poised, just a foot away from a boy, biro poised also.
I was fascinated by everything about their daily routine. I had always thought that boys were wild, untameable beasts who got up at tea time. I'm not entirely sure why I assumed that anyone at Leeds University studying English Literature would be like Ronnie Wood, but no matter. So I was pleasantly surprised to see them in the library at 9am. Seeing boys everywhere felt like I had suddenly arrived into 'life'. As you can see, the library was my theatre; the landscape upon which my discovery of mixed sex education, nay life, played out.
So the news that there is debate over whether the UK should have gender segregated university lectures strikes me as very disappointing indeed. For the people who have enjoyed a mixed education, the presence of the other sex will prove no distraction. For those who were educated in single sex institutions, it definitely is a distraction but one that us single-sexers both deserve and need. University is the time for us to get our head around the presence of BOYSBOYSBOYS and GIRLSGIRLSGIRLS in the workplace. If gender segregation presses ahead, you'll severely compromise a graduate's first job. "Priscilla! STOP staring at the boy photocopying and file your work, NOW." Or, "David, YES Priscilla's typing very competently on her keyboard, but there's no need to gawp about it." Life will be like one extended school disco: boys on the right, girls on the left. The other sex will be a novelty; something to either by intimidated by, or trivialise (for the record, I always found boys intimidating rather than trivial.)
So the news that there is debate over whether the UK should have gender segregated university lectures strikes me as very disappointing indeed. For the people who have enjoyed a mixed education, the presence of the other sex will prove no distraction. For those who were educated in single sex institutions, it definitely is a distraction but one that us single-sexers both deserve and need. University is the time for us to get our head around the presence of BOYSBOYSBOYS and GIRLSGIRLSGIRLS in the workplace. If gender segregation presses ahead, you'll severely compromise a graduate's first job. "Priscilla! STOP staring at the boy photocopying and file your work, NOW." Or, "David, YES Priscilla's typing very competently on her keyboard, but there's no need to gawp about it." Life will be like one extended school disco: boys on the right, girls on the left. The other sex will be a novelty; something to either by intimidated by, or trivialise (for the record, I always found boys intimidating rather than trivial.)
Of course, I am taking the slightly pithy route here, as ever. I can understand that for devout Muslims, gender segregation is preferable. (On the opposing side of the coin, Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, recently cautioned against universities pandering to religious beliefs and Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee, argued that universities are not anvils to hammer out society's problems.) The issue is that it will start to feel like sexism. If we quantify it, debatably more people will be offended by the separation, than not (i.e. everyone.) The lecturers will become painfully aware that they must ask equal questions to the male side, as they do the female. And vice versa. One girl told of being tearfully separated from her boyfriend during a lecture (not the most traumatising separation though, let's be honest) and likening it, not unfairly, to apartheid. Isn't separating people by sex, as divisive as by colour?
I know that the trifling issue of having fun at university hasn't even entered into the policy-makers' debates - and why should it - so I'm here to champion that cause. Undergraduates are now so besieged by debt; by the illusive promise of a First (one mark off, since you ask and no, haven't ever got over it); by figuring out what the heck they are going to do next, in a sea of over-educated 21-year-olds. The last thing a 'fresher' needs is to have the small thrilling part of their day taken away. It's not like anyone's going to start bonking in the aisles, for goodness sake. They've all got single beds the size of a packet of Lurpak, for that. University would have been so much less fun without the endless possibility of having boys everywhere. Ok, sure, so I never had sex in the library and no-one ever passed me notes during seminars that said "U R fit", but just knowing that it could happen, or had happened to someone else, was the caffeine that perked me up just a little bit, every day.
Disclaimer: Pandora is no longer fascinated with boys. Indeed, she lives with one and has got over the endless heroism of him merely existing, within the same space as her. But she will still never forget those halcyon days.