Clothes? Check. Computer? Check. Television? Check. Stereo? Check. DVD player? Check. Cell phone? Check. Fido? . . . Fido?

I think Stephens College (Obscure fact: Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Class of 1946.), among other institutions, is on to something.

Elizabeth Armstrong Moore reports in Tuesday’s Christian Science Monitor (“Animal Dorm”):

After several students and new president Wendy Libby -- who is rarely seen without her black lab Abby -- discussed the emotional advantages of having pets at school, Stephens College, a small all-female liberal arts school in Columbia, Mo., kicked off 2004-05 with a newly designated eight-room “pet floor” in Pruny Hall, becoming one of only a few colleges in the nation to allow pets in dorm rooms.

According to Moore, pets also are permitted at the Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland; Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, Fla.; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.; and the State University of New York College of Technology at Canton, Canton, N.Y.

This is neither a simple, nor an uncontroversial, proposition, as Moore reports. Both critics and supporters raising such issues as cleanliness, noise, cruelty, and, most important, the need for college students to develop a strong sense of independence as they move -- seemingly at a snail’s pace these days -- toward adulthood.

Nonetheless, I think it’s a concept worth examining further, and you know who agrees with me about that.

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