Gender-neutral housing receives positive feedback in 1st month

But this year, Cooper and Borchard are living together in a suite of two men and two women as part of the gender-neutral housing pilot program in Spelman Halls, which has been running for one month without any reported problems.

Of the 14 mixed-gender draw groups who signed up to draw into one of Spelman’s quads last spring, nine mixed-gender groups ended up living together. One month into the new academic year, University administrators responsible for overseeing the policy as well as students living in the nine gender-neutral suites have all reported a seamless transition.

“It’s been absolutely incredible,” Cooper said. “I really like living with guys and girls. We all balance each other out in a really good way.”

Vice President for Campus Life Cynthia Cherrey said that “it would be premature to assess the status of the program at this time” because the policy has only been in practice for one month.

However, Undergraduate Housing Manager Angela Hodgeman noted that to her knowledge, no University administrator has received a single complaint from students living in gender-neutral housing.

“It’s not unusual for some students to ask to change rooms at the beginning of each year,” Hodgeman said in an e-mail. “However, at this time none of the students currently living in gender-neutral housing have applied for a room change.”

The pilot program only offers gender-neutral housing to students living in Spelman, which means that all underclassmen are ineligible.

Debbie Bazarsky, director of the LGBT Center, said in an e-mail that this limitation is a particular concern for freshmen and sophomores, “especially those who are transgender or genderqueer identified.”

Though Bazarsky said she has “heard great things about the gender-neutral housing option from students who signed up for it last year,” she added that “a number of students have shared with me that they wanted to sign up for GNH, but felt the current setup requiring independent students be in their draw group to qualify for Spelman was too limiting.”

The University announced the plan last fall, following the recommendation of a working group comprised of students and administrators.

“On a more national scale, we were behind,” said Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Maria Flores-Mills, who acts as the liaison between the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Studentsto the Department of Housing. “Most schools had already done this, and we hadn’t.”

Borchard said he was not bothered by the slow pace of change.

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“Universities are fairly liberal places, but that doesn’t mean that change comes incredibly fast,” Borchard explained, adding that students had not pushed for the policy change before last year.

One concern routinely raised at colleges considering gender-neutral housing programs is the risk of couples choosing to live together, only to break up that year.

But Flores-Mills said that the University would handle a fallout between romantically involved students in the same way that it responds to any other roommate problem.

Alexander Ulyett ’11, who is living in Spelman with two females and another male this year, also said that the prospect of roommates falling out is not limited to mixed-gender rooms.

“Roommate issues can begin in any room, so I don’t think there are any gender-neutral specific issues that would arise,” he said.

Cooper noted that some students she had spoken to had raised personal concerns. Some, for example, felt uncomfortable at the prospect of sharing bathrooms with members of the opposite gender.

“Half the campus is the opposite gender, so it’s nice to have the option to live with those people, but it’s up to individual discretion,” Cooper said.

Though the administration has yet to formally evaluate the program and make a decision regarding the potential for expansion, students said they would like to see gender-neutral housing made more widely available.

“I definitely think it should be expanded,” Cooper said. “For people who want to live together with the opposite gender, to have that option just creates a more inclusive campus.”