I think Brophy should be co-ed. In my opinion, the biggest reason why is because Brophy strives to be a community of equity and inclusion. How can Brophy strive to be inclusive if we exclude an entire group of people? Brophy should offer its amazing opportunities to both men and women. By excluding an entire gender, Brophy is not only unfair to female students, but it’s also unfair to its own students.

Brophy always encourages us to have courageous conversations about topics that are controversial and difficult to talk about. If we have these conversations at an all male school, then we lack an essential part of the conversation: the female perspective.

This is especially true when talking about topics such as abortion, gender roles/stereotypes, and pornography. By being co-ed, a full and complete perspective can be brought to the table, and having a full perspective is an essential part of the Jesuit formation. Even with the female faculty at Brophy, there is a deficit of the female voice on campus.

This deficit also diminishes the opportunity for Brophy students to learn how to interact with women in healthy and serious ways. Brophy students have deep conversations with each other in the classroom, whether they are friends or acquaintances. Knowing how to interact seriously with people you don’t know well is an essential skill to have in life. 

Think about it, everyone in your class who is not your friend, you have interacted and gotten to know them in a serious way. If Brophy students only look at their female counterparts as friends or potential romantic partners, when will they learn to have serious, courageous conversations with the opposite gender? 

Very few single-sex colleges exist in the US anymore, so these types of conversations with women are bound to happen in the future. The lack of female students on campus also makes Broncos go four years without knowing what it’s like to be on a campus and in a classroom with girls. No, it is not a matter of being able to talk to girls outside of school, it is simply a fact that we will have gone four years without having female students in a class with us before entering college.

I know from personal experience that Brophy students are very relaxed with one another, which is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I think the community that guys have with one another is one of the good things about an all boys school.

However, I know that guys can be relaxed with what they say and do when there are no girls around. Even though guys know they shouldn’t say certain things around girls (whether or not they should say those things at all is another topic), it will be difficult to change those habits after four years of being at an all guys school.