In Loco Parentis: Mark II
I was a college student in the early sixties, when the doctrine of in loco parentis mostly meant the college trying--with limited success--to restrict student sexual activity on behalf of the (presumed) wishes of the parents. In that form it vanished shortly after I graduated, to be replaced by an unconditional surrender to the sexual revolution: mixed gender dorms, contraceptive services, and the like. On a recent visit to a California campus, I noticed flyers advertising a talk on the subject of the G-spot.
But parents, even in loco ones, abandon one attempt to run their children's lives only to replace it with another. When I went to college there were mixers, but for the most part the matter of finding friends, romantic or otherwise, was left to the students themselves.
No longer. On the same campus I got a description of the elaborate procedures by which the college makes sure that none of their students is at risk of a solitary existence. Dorms are divided up into carefully constructed groups of freshmen--football fans in this one, movie fans in that, each group with a couple of sophomores to provide wise advice. Each group is allocated its chunk of the dorm. The year starts with a several day expedition to some carefully chosen vacation spot--in the case reported to me, sailing off Santa Catalina island, where "sailing" meant not actually controlling a sailboat but being a passenger on a tall ship.
Most of the students who described the system to me seemed happy with it, but I did wonder about what sort of wimps the present system is producing. No practice at all in evading parietal rules--most of them have probably never heard of parietal rules. And being taught that the job of finding their own friends is too hard for them, so must be done by someone older and wiser.
I gather, however, that relationships, romantic or otherwise, outside of the preselected groups are not entirely unknown.