According to an August 2009 article in Forbes, "America's Best Colleges 2009," America's best college is the U.S. Military Academy, also known as West Point. The college has an 11:30 p.m. dorm curfew for all its students, meaning that everyone must be in their dorm at this hour. It's a part of the demanding student lifestyle for those attending West Point. In addition to making curfew, students are required to keep their rooms meticulously clean.
Another college with a curfew is Gordon College in Georgia. However, unlike West Point, Gordon College has a midnight curfew that states that students are no longer allowed to loiter past this time. A big part of college is the atmosphere. A part of this atmosphere is mingling with fellow students all across campus. Gordon College's curfew doesn't say that students have to go to bed at midnight, just that they aren't allowed to loiter past the hour.
Curfews are a part of student life at West Point to teach discipline. However, this isn't the norm at other colleges that implement curfews. Most colleges enforce curfews for safety reasons. This is because burglaries, sexual assaults and other crimes are more likely to occur in the late night hours than during the daytime hours when campus is more populated.
The biggest argument against college curfews is the concept that college is an institution for adult learning, and therefore the students should be treated like adults. The majority of college students are at least 18 years old, which, by federal law, makes them legal adults. Therefore, even if they're living in dorms at college, opponents of college curfews say students should be allowed to make and learn from their own decisions.