COHABITING AND YOUTHS

Picture the following scenario. A university male student wakes up early in the morning and heads straight for the showers so he could take a bath in readiness for his early morning class. With a tooth brush in his mouth, he heads for the bathroom sinks to brush his teeth, but as he approaches the sinks he sees a girl wrapped in a rather short towel busy brushing her teeth at the same sinks. Midway to the sinks, he stops shocked, just staring at her, mouth hanging open and so his tooth brush drops to the floor with a noise, loud enough to make the girl turn around.
Expecting her to be as shocked as he is, she instead just says a quick good morning and continues with her business. The poor guy is standing in the same position and still staring. The girl finishes brushing her teeth and expecting her to leave she heads for the showers and starts showering and singing rather loudly in territory that is not exactly hers.
The guy who happens to be a first year student at this university is now wondering what a girl is doing so early in the morning in the male bathroom. He even wonders whether he is in the right hostel. It makes him wonder whether he is seeing things. He blinks just to make sure, but the girl continues singing.
Such scenes are no longer a surprise or shocking at the University of Zambia (UNZA). The guy and the girl are just imaginary, but the scenario described is only too real at UNZA.Why such a phenomenon? Cohabiting, that is why. According to the Free Dictionary Online, cohabitation is defined as living together in a sexual relationship, especially when not legally married. In other words, it is a living arrangement in which an unmarried couple lives together in a long-term relationship that resembles a marriage.
Cohabiting at this university has reached a rather advanced stage. Male and female students are living together like it was normal thing to do. Cohabiting in universities is so wide spread and it has become a global phenomenon especially common amongst the youth. According to a survey conducted at a university in the USA 1 out of 4 people is cohabiting (Giddens).Nearly 50% of people in their 20s and 30s all over the world cohabit. It is a global problem.
There are a number of reasons as to why students at UNZA are cohabiting .After interviewing a cross section of the students the major reason that came out was that a number of students especially the females are lacking accommodation and so they opt to cohabiting with their boyfriends. Currently at UNZA there is only 25% of accommodation allocated to female students, the rest of the 85% is meant for the male students.
Another reason why students are cohabiting is because they love each other and simply want to be together all the time. One girl talked to and is currently cohabiting said she decided to move in with her boyfriend because she loved him and could not stated being away from him.In addition to moving in together the people cohabiting say they do it so they can know the person they intend spending the rest of their lives with better. In other words they are experimenting to find out if the person they are going out with will be good marriage material in the future.
Others claim that cohabiting helps them in meeting the high financial costs of being at UNZA. University education is very expensive especially with the prevailing poverty levels in the country. It is believed that if two students are staying together whether male or female they are able to meet each other half way by putting their meal allowances together. Worse still some people are not even on government sponsorship so cohabiting helps them avoid the high boarding house fees outside campus which are rather very expensive. By staying with their partners in school they cut down on these costs.
Others claim that the cohabiting helps them in their studies. They claim that the person they cohabit with helps them in their academic work especially that UNZA sometimes requires overnight studies.
Moreover, some cohabit because it is in ‘fashion’. Being young, most students have been swayed into believing that cohabiting is a practice of modernity which they very much want to acquire by all means. Just like the latest clothes in fashion so is cohabiting. It is the ‘in-thing’.
Even though the reasons given for cohabiting have got justifiable reasons to them, it is important to also look at the impacts of cohabitation which are usually negative. These negative impacts are not only on the person practicing the cohabiting but the people around him. In this case, the cohabiting couple can cause inconvenience to their roommates and the level mates especially the ones that pop in the bathrooms early in the morning like our friend in the scenario described earlier.
One girl whose roommate was cohabiting said she just could not stand the thought of a guy sleeping in the same as she was. This, she says is not the way she was brought up and her Christian and traditional values just could not agree with this.
Cohabiting will bring problems for the students in that they will now have two responsibilities to handle school and a relationship. According to an America psychologist James Haddock, when a student has got a number of responsibilities she will usually have to concentrate more on one and let the other suffer. Usually students would rather they made their partners happy by committing their all to them.
Cohabitation according to definition given means couples involved are most likely to engage in sexual intercourse which results in unwanted pregnancies which consequently lead to at most times the relationship breaks up because responsibility for the pregnancy is denied. Consequently, most female students get so devastated that they end up not concentrating on their studies. Worse still, some girls end up aborting and as if this is not enough they risk getting the incurable AIDS.
As for the ones that do it for trying to find out whether the person they are dating is good marriage material, they are actually experimenting and experiments do backfire in the labs. According to a research by Giddens, a sociologist scholar, it was discovered that only 15 percent of those that were cohabiting actually got married and the 85 percent were left alone having to start all over again. Their time was wasted. Experiments failed and the chemicals used were wasted or disposed of. Chemicals in this case were the people involved in the cohabiting.
UNZA Deputy Dean of Students Affairs Mr Langton Zyambo said the accommodation problem at UNZA should not be made as excuse for cohabiting and that anyone found wanting will be punished severely according to the laid down rules and regulations.
Mr Zyambo said a number of memorandums had been issued warning students practicing cohabiting to stop.
“We are serious about this issue,” he emphasized. And he added that hall attendants have also been directed to go round rooms to find out who the culprits are.
Rule eight of the rules and regulations of UNZA states, “No student shall keep a visitor or friend, either male or female, in a study room overnight. Conjugal relationships or cohabiting is not permitted in study rooms for either male or female hostels. Failure to comply with this rule will result in the student being excluded from residence for the duration of his or her programme.”
After all is said and done, it is up to an individual to do what they want but everyone should remember that the choices we make make us. They determine who we will be in the future.Cohabiting, should be something that someone has to think about critically before venturing into it.