Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-98.235.154.24-20130913002452/@comment-11687-20131030175024

Angren Túrë wrote: BenRG wrote: Zourin wrote:

With only 5 minutes per week, do we *really* want a dissertation on Beacon's cohabing policy ...or... watch more story/comedy/badassery? I think that it could be possible to have a 'blink and you'll miss it' comment to the effect that there just isn't the taboo about mixed gender shared rooms on Vytal as there is on Earth.

Or maybe a moment where a half-naked girl asks one of the guys to choose between blouses; no-one blinks an eye. It just isn't an issue, espeically not for Hunters and Huntresses who could reasonably be expected to spend weeks and months sharing tight accommodations out in the field. Agreed. I think that attending Beacon necessitates a certain level of professionalism and maturity. Bottom line is, you're going to be going into situations with a very real possibility of death with these people--if you can do that, sharing a room with them should be the least of your problems.

That's a fairly credible line of inductive reasoning. However, that line of reasoning seems to be more focused towards administrative policy rather than the actual issues regarding having teenagers of different sexes living together. In other words, that's probably how the staff of Beacon considers the issue; whether or not that's how things actually are for the students is something else again.

Ruby notwithstanding, the main cast members (e.g. the remaining members of Team RWBY, and all of Team JNPR) are all seventeen years old. Notwithstanding criticisms of causation versus correlation in regards to brain imaging, current studies indicate that while the late teens is when the hypothalamus and front lobe of the cerebral cortex (the areas responsible for self-control, risk analysis, and delayed gratification, among other things) finish most of their complex development, and full development does not finish until around age twenty-five.

Further, the idea that facing life-or-death situations will encourage greater responsible behavior is misplaced. To the contrary, fear is likely to cause misattribution of arousal instead, actually encouraging greater sexual tension between teammates, rather than discouraging it. While habituation may cause this stimulus to fade after repeated exposure, that still requires repeated exposure that can have strong initial results, for an indeterminate length of time.

Casting further doubt on the idea that the students of Beacon are simply too responsible to have sex is that we can abduce that they've had very little sexual education. Remember, seventeen is the starting age for students at Beacon, and that's following a presumed four-year course in a combat school.

Even taking into account their use of aura powers and abilities, the graduates of combat schools have insane combat prowess (as demonstrated in the fifth through eighth episodes). A comparison to Olympic athletes is probably the closest probable parallel, and Olympic athletes have heavy training regimens. This leaves little time for formal education in other areas (though, to be fair, exercise does increase learning ability in people). It's not coincidental that the Olympic Village for each game is a hotbed of sex.

This is leaving aside the issue that there's no evidence suggesting that trying to convince teenagers to remain abstinent voluntarily has not been shown to be effective.

It's therefore not unreasonable to assume that the students of Beacon are having a lot of clandestine sex. Sadly, unless it's part of Beacons policy to hand out condoms to students, there's also probably more than a few unwanted pregnancies as well, which would disproportionally disenfranchise the female student population (though there's no way to say to what percentage, since that'd require demographic information that we don't have at this point).

Given that, while the staff of Beacon may hope that their students are exercising responsibility and restraint over their libidos, it's far and away more likely that a significant part of the student body is getting it on.