In the wake of several acts of homophobia on campus, the Undergraduate Council has passed a bill condemning the current practice of allowing first-years to switch rooms if they feel uncomfortable living with a gay roommate. We join the council in urging the Freshman Dean's Office (FDO) to reconsider this policy, but not on the grounds that it veils some a deep-seated resentment towards homosexuals on campus. Rather, it is because, on a deeper level, the policy is antithetical to the fundamental educational mission of this University.

The FDO, by accommodating students' requests to be transferred out of living arrangements with a gay student, is ostensibly attempting to eliminate a potentially uncomfortable source of sexual tension. We hope that most students who request the change usually do not harbor negative feelings against gays in particular but rather feel somehow uncomfortable living with a gay roommate. The FDO, then, is merely alleviating a particular kind of discomfort.

Yet, the FDO would almost never give the same legitimacy to discomfort created on the basis of race or religion. Nor would they honor transfer requests solely on the basis of divergent academic interests or extracurricular pursuits. In many cases this discomfort is real and genuine. But FDO is right to intervene only if this discomfort should ever have dangerous consequences. We are not convinced that sexual orientation automatically creates such a danger.

If anything, this moderate discomfort is crucial to learning. Education--both academic and personal--is not a process by which we comfortably reaffirm our preexisting beliefs. Rather, learning stems from discomfort, from exposure to people who are different from ourselves. It is a process by which we test our personal truths against an array of competing beliefs.

Some students might genuinely feel uncomfortable living with a roommate who is gay. But that student should have the opportunity to use that discomfort as a learning experience. For the same reasons we promote religious and racial toleration, we cannot sanction the FDO's current policy towards gay roommates.

Conservatives, in all their syllogistic aptitude, might be quick to point out that if a student must room with a gay roommate, male and female students should also be forced to room together. And to some extent, there might be some truth to the claim. At many universities across the nation, male and female students successfully share rooming arrangements. Yale University has coed bathrooms in some dormitories. On campus, Quincy House allows coed rooming groups.

In the future, Harvard may wish to reconsider their policy on placing male and female first-years in the same rooms. But the task now at hand, however, is first to eliminate our misguided biases towards sexual orientation.