Picture this: After a long day of seminars, performatively smoking on Middle Path and complacently watching a group of five cut you in the Peirce Express line, you retreat to the comfort and safety of your stuffy double. Having brushed your teeth and cleansed your mind and body, you settle on top of your twin XL mattress topper and pull out your phone to watch some relaxing Instagram Reels. You notice Frank Ocean playing in a nearby dorm room but, disturbingly, Frank isn’t the only one performing.

There is no issue with you having sex. The issue is that I can hear it. There’s a saying, “I really don’t mind what people do, so long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.” There aren’t any horses on my dorm floor, but there are a few frightened first years. 

If you get it on without regard for those around you, you may very well be disturbing someone’s sleep and potentially affecting their health. A 2019 study suggests that annoyance from neighbor noise is associated with various mental and physical health symptoms. And you wouldn’t want to trigger my physiological stress-responses, would you? English poet John Donne asserts that love “makes both one, each this and that.” A beautiful sentiment. But ideally, the two become one without making the entire floor a third.

So what can be done? I think most of the responsibility falls on the lovemakers. Part of the Office of Residential Life’s Independent Living Agreement is that quiet hours apply to all residential spaces. I would argue that this courtesy extends to whichever bed, carpet or desk upon which you choose to make whoopee. The same policy states, “Repeated noise complaints or violations may result in residential reassignment.” I suggest reassigning the position of your bed (at least) 6 inches from my wall to limit banging if you want to avoid bringing these more drastic measures upon yourself. 

However, one could argue that sex on campus is also something of a team effort. Kenyon may also have a part to play in making sex more tolerable for those uninvolved. The College is hardly shy about promoting safe sex. It’s practically impossible to go a week at Peirce Hall without being handed a glow-in-the-dark condom at lunch. Why not give away stuff for the benefit of the students trying to sleep? It’s great that Kenyon wants to protect against sexually transmitted infections, but what about protecting the sleep of the guy next door? Boston University offers its students “Sleep Kits,” including a sleep mask, earplugs, bedtime tea and more. The University of North Carolina lists both sex and sleep supplies under the broad definition of “Wellness Supplies.” Every condom should come with a complimentary pair of earplugs for your neighbors. As Philander Chase never said, earplugs are like condoms for your ears. 

Alternatively, Kenyon could provide us with “sex rooms.” We already have study rooms, and Kenyon seems at least equally interested in our sex lives as it does in our academic success. This new system would simply require a different reservation category and a more frequent cleaning schedule, which could be a just punishment for quiet hour violators. Imagine a sexual paradise, complete with swings, sex toys growing on trees and fountains of lube. If, for some bizarre reason, Kenyon doesn’t decide to go through with this, we could instead put alarms into the dorm rooms for sex-havers to pull when they are about to fornicate. Lights flash, horns sound and those of us who want to avoid the sweet sounds can retreat to sensory deprivation chambers on our respective floors.

Sex is beautiful, intimate and can be an important part of discovering who you are. I’m not asking anyone to stop. I just want people to remember that their private lives share a wall with mine. By all means, let yourselves intertwine, but keep in mind that some of us have an 8:10 a.m. tomorrow.

Rowan Moore ’30 is a prospective philosophy major from Atlanta. He can be reached at moore14@kenyon.edu.