To the editors:

Even though I'm bisexual, I think the point raised in the dissent ("A Thinly Veiled Bias," Nov. 2) is valid. Tossing a homophobic straight kid from the Midwest into a living situation with a queer roommate and forcing them to live together isn't likely to do anyone any good. In my opinion, a queer kid should have just as much right to demand that he be removed from a living situation with a straight person because he is not comfortable having to co-habitate with a homophobe, even if that person is mostly civil.

Your roommate is a crucial component of the college experience. I dropped out of school, partially because I had a very bad roommate experience my second year. I think the likely result of this policy will be that students will leave or develop alternative living arrangements that allow them to relieve their discomfort. In fact, I suspect that if the issue were researched, it would be found that in almost every situation where there was discomfort and a change request was denied, some arrangement of this sort occurred. You can't force people to live together.

Furthermore, the privacy analogy between being forced to live with a member of the opposite sex and a queer member of the same gender is correct. We are raised, in this culture, with a very strong personal privacy taboo around the opposite sex, and a queer person fills that role. I can't imagine how it could have been productive when I was in college to force me to live with a woman who wasn't comfortable with the idea of disrobing in front of me or me changing in front of her. Fortunately, my roommate did not have a problem with my orientation (it was public), but if he had, I would not have wanted to live with him!

Thomas Leavitt

Santa Cruz, Calif., Nov. 3, 1999