LGBT students praise gender-neutral housing program

For the 2010-11 academic year, the University will be offering a gender-neutral housing option in Spelman Halls. The pilot program will permit gender-neutral occupancy in the apartment-style rooms of Spelman, eliminating the requirement that draw groups for Spelman must have four students of the same gender. The program is not expected to affect any other dorms during its first year.

“This is definitely not something that speaks solely to the LGBT community, and I really wanted to emphasize that,” Emily Rutherford ’12 said in an interview last week. “But I definitely accept the premise and endorse the premise that LGBT students have a particular stake in this,” she added.

Rutherford helped bring this issue to the administration’s attention with efforts that included writing about it in the Princeton Progressive Nation and helping to draft the Undergraduate Life Committee’s proposal for the pilot program.

University administrators have not explained the program in terms of its impact on the LGBT community, specifically. After the program was announced, however, Vice President for Campus Life Janet Dickerson explained in an e-mail that the program was created “in recognition that there are some upperclass students for whom this option would be more comfortable and appealing.”

Katen said she sees clear implications for LGBT students. “It’s obviously a huge step for any transgender students that we have,” she explained. “I think it’ll make many of them feel more comfortable to be out as transgender in Princeton and will also make transgender prospective students more likely to come here.”

Katen added that she also sees it as a step forward in University recognition of gay relationships. “It shows more support for the queer community in general,” she said. “I think only having all-male and all-female housing is heteronormative … [The new program] kind of legitimizes your relationship a little bit more.”

LGBT Center Director Debra Bazarsky said in an interview last week that the decision would be an important step forward for all students at the University. “I am glad to hear that Princeton has moved in the direction to offer a pilot program for gender-free housing for undergraduate students,” she said in an e-mail. “This will have positive outcomes for transgender and genderqueer students as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual and heterosexual students. Princeton is behind most of its peer institutions in piloting this type of program, and I look forward to seeing how it works in its first year.”

For Jeanette Beebe ’11, the initiative represents a good starting point.

“It’s a long time coming. I would have hoped that this policy would have already been implemented, but I’m very happy it’s being implemented now,” she said, adding that while she’s pleased with the decision, she hopes people will be proactive in trying to expand it for underclassmen.

“We need to not be satisfied with this step. We need to move forward,” Beebe explained. “First- and second-year students are often the most vulnerable students, and they need to be supported.”

Katen said she hopes this decision will help change attitudes in the student body, though she noted that the student body is already fairly accepting overall.

“I think that there are always going to be changes that can be made, but I think this is definitely an amazing step forward, and it’s definitely something concrete,” Katen said. “Over the next 10 years, the changes will be more in how we think and how we act than any changes that the administration puts forth … a social change in general, rather than an administrative change.”

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Katen said she is considering the new option for the future, adding that since she’s going abroad next year, she hasn’t yet decided whether she will participate in the Spelman draw.

Beebe had been planning to stay in residential housing all four years. “I am considering [the Spelman draw] now,” she said, “but I’ll have to think about it.”