All four- and five-person suites in Grad Center towers A, B, C and D will be coed optional next year, the Office of Residential Life announced in a campus-wide e-mail Thursday. The decision will open up 285 beds to coed housing, increasing coed suites on campus by 34 percent overall.
The Residential Council proposed making Grad Center coed in both 2003 and 2004. The Undergraduate Council of Students supported the proposal last week.
"We as a council are very excited that Grad Center is now going to be coed," said Adam Deitch '05, president of ResCouncil. "I think it's a great opportunity for students, especially rising sophomores, to have a greater flexibility in choosing housing."
The proposal received near-unanimous support from students, said David Greene, vice president of campus life and student services. In addition to the ResCouncil and UCS endorsements, Greene said every student to whom he talked, except one, supported the proposal.
"The only complaint I received was from one student who said, 'This is another example of Brown's liberal policy going too far,'" Greene said.
ResLife originally had reservations about the proposal because Grad Center suites do not have single-use bathrooms with doors that lock, normally a requirement for coed suites. As a result, Grad Center will undergo minor renovations to make the dormitories appropriate for coed suites next year.
"There will be modest renovations to the restrooms to provide the locking mechanisms. That will be done over the summer," Greene said, adding that the renovations would cost about $15,000.
Greene said that as a result of the decision, the deadline for Segment I applications in the housing lottery, which includes four-person suites, was extended to noon Monday. The original deadline was today at 4 p.m., but Greene said ResLife wanted to give students additional time to consider coed options.
Student reaction Thursday to the new coed optional suites was positive.
"I think it's a great decision, so long as people are comfortable with it," said Valerie Wong '08, who is applying for a four-person suite. "But I think that's also a decision that should have been announced sooner," she added.
In addition to added coed suites, two other significant changes have been made to this year's housing lottery. The first change allows rising seniors to "squat" in stand-alone singles, meaning they can remain in their current room next year.
"The decision was made because we felt that the way that we're instituting squatting does not undermine the system of seniority that drives the lottery, and it also increases the ability of students to select the most desirable housing possible and decreases the overall stress with the housing lottery," Deitch said.
The second change from last year makes the summer waitlist the equivalent of a fifth segment in the housing lottery. Whereas in the past, any student could opt to be placed on the summer waitlist, this year, only students without housing after the first four segments of the lottery will be eligible to receive housing off of the waitlist.
