Meet your new roommate!

Erik Youngdahl and Michelle Garcia share a dorm room at Connecticut’s Wesleyan University. But they say there’s no funny business going on — really.

They have set up their beds side-by-side like Lucy and Ricky in “I Love Lucy,” and avert their eyes when one of them is changing clothes.

“People are shocked to hear that it’s happening and even that it’s possible,” said Youngdahl, a 20-year-old sophomore. But “once you actually live in it, it doesn’t actually turn into a big deal.”

In the prim 1950s, college dorms were off-limits to members of the opposite sex. Then came the 1970s, when male and female students started crossing paths in coed dormitories. Now, to the astonishment of some Baby Boomer parents, a growing number of colleges are going even further: coed rooms.

At least two dozen schools in the U.S., including Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania, Oberlin College, Clark University and the California Institute of Technology, allow some or all students to share a room with anyone they choose — including someone of the opposite sex. This spring, as students sign up for next year’s room, more schools are following suit, including Stanford University.

In Canada, universities have been slower to pick up on the trend. Maclean’s was unable to find a university that offered a co-ed option for a shared dorm room, although most universities now have co-ed residence floors. Housing officials at the University of British Columbia, University of Alberta, University of Toronto, and York University said that they do not allow two students of the opposite sex to share a standard undergraduate residence, which most often consists of a small room with two single beds. Some universities, such as York, permit co-ed arrangements for suite-style residences — dorms with three or four single bedrooms attached to a shared bathroom, kitchen, and living space.

As shocking as it sounds to some parents, some students and schools say it’s not about sex. Instead, they say the demand is mostly from heterosexual students who want to live with close friends who happen to be of the opposite sex. Some gay students who feel more comfortable rooming with someone of the opposite sex are also taking advantage of the option.

“It ultimately comes down to finding someone that you feel is compatible with you,” said Jeffrey Chang, a junior at Clark in Worcester, Mass., who co-founded the National Student Genderblind Campaign, a group that is pushing for gender-neutral housing. “Students aren’t doing this to make a point. They’re not doing this to upset their parents. It’s really for practical reasons.”

Couples do sometimes room together, an arrangement known at some schools as “roomcest.” Brown explicitly discourages couples from living together on campus, be they gay or straight. But the University of California, Riverside has never had a problem with a roommate couple breaking up midyear, said James C. Smith, assistant director for residence life.