Dorm sex: loud as you want, not whenever you want

By SARAH GRAMMER

Valentine’s Day is a day dedicated to exchanging tokens of affection with the ones you love. For most of us this means eating heart-shaped foods our friends give us, but for those in steady romantic relationships, it is a time to prove your love for one another by trading cliché gifts and “Netflix and chilling” until the break of dawn.

According to CNN, 85 percent of men and women consider sex to be an important part of Valentine’s Day. The students of the University of Mary Washington, all being consenting adults, are no exception to this. Some students will be spending their holiday weekend indoors having copious amounts of sex with their partners or possibly just themselves. Either way, sex happens on college campuses all the time.

When it comes to getting laid while living on campus, students face a major problem: privacy. The residence halls of UMW are not known for having particularly sound-proof walls. They might as well be made of paper, honestly.

On a regular basis I am awoken by the sounds of squeaky bed springs or light moaning from the room next door. On one rare occasion the thin wall dividing my neighbor and I began to visibly shake. In my half-asleep state I was convinced it was an earthquake, until I realized that earthquakes don’t breathe heavily nor do they shout “yes” in a long, drawn-out fashion. Unable to return to sleep or find any headphones, I was stuck listening to the entirety of their morning sex routine. The buildup was easy enough to ignore, but the climax, on the other hand, is something you can never forget, no matter how badly you want to.

I have heard multiple stories about loft beds squeaking and banging against walls all night, and just when you think your neighbors have finally exhausted themselves, they start round two continuing to keep up the entire hallway until the odd hours of the morning.

Some couples try to be less obvious about their sexcapades by moving the mattress to the floor to avoid the inevitable squeaking, but this doesn’t prevent their sounds of pleasure from escaping the privacy of their rooms.

Is there a quiet way to have sex in a residence hall? Sure, if you really want to be quiet it is possible, but much more likely that your roommate will walk in on you because there are no sounds warning them to not enter the room.

Most couples though, could not care less if you hear them copulating. For some, this is their way of flaunting the fact that they are having sex and you are not, but others really cannot help but vocally express their orgasm.

Should these couples be courteous of their neighbors and, at least, try to quiet down their nocturnal activities?

It is a consenting adult’s right to have sex in the way that is most pleasing to them and other students being uncomfortable with it should not get in the way. Though this does not give them the right to purposefully try and keep their hall-mates up all night. Quiet hours still apply here. As long as you are obeying quiet hour rules, why not have sex as loud as you want?

Your neighbors can always buy earplugs.