In this spring's housing lottery, sophomores and juniors may have the option to live in a double with students of the opposite gender as part of Brown's changing housing policy. The gender-blind housing policy under consideration, which comes as a number of other schools across the nation look into gender-neutral housing, would allow upperclass students to choose housing without regard to gender.
The Diversity Advisory Board is currently reviewing the recommendations of the LGBTQ Advisory Committee on gender-neutral housing. If the board approves the recommendations of the working group at its upcoming meeting in February then greater gender-neutral housing options for students, including co-ed doubles, could be offered in this year's housing lottery, said Margaret Klawunn, associate vice president of campus life and dean for student life.
The Residential Council, an advisory board to the Office of Residential Life, passed a resolution last spring in full support of allowing sophomores and upper-class students to pick their room regardless of gender, Klawunn said.
The recommendations that the LGBTQ Advisory Committee made to the Diversity Advisory Board are based on information gathered about gender-neutral housing policies at peer institutions, the University's housing inventory and "what our students were asking for," said Klawunn.
Gender-neutral housing is "a rapidly changing landscape nationally," said Russell Carey '91 MA'06, interim vice president for campus life & student services. In 2003, Brown incorporated gender identity into its nondiscrimination statement, Carey said, adding that since then, all the Ivy League institutions have incorporated gender identity into their nondiscrimination policies.
As awareness grows about gender identity, there have been recent movements at other Ivy League institutions to consider changing housing policies. As part of the working group's investigations into the issue of gender-neutral housing, Kelly Garrett, who heads the LGBTQ Advisory Committee, said that she looked at Brown's peer institutions and their policies.
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, and Columbia have no gender-neutral housing, according to Garrett. Dartmouth launched a pilot program this fall that reserves a floor in one residential hall for students who would like to discuss and learn about gender identity issues. The program floor "is the one place in a regular double where we don't care about the gender of the occupants," said Rachael Class-Giguere, director of housing at Dartmouth. In addition to the program floor, Dartmouth offers students gender-neutral housing in the form of co-ed apartments or suites but requires that they have private lockable bedrooms and single-use bathrooms, Class-Giguere said. She added that Dartmouth would like to evaluate the program for a year or two before considering offering co-ed doubles to all students.
Though Cornell and Harvard have no set policies on gender-neutral housing, the universities are discussing adopting such options, Garrett said. Since 2004, the University of Pennsylvania has allowed sophomores and upperclass students to live in co-ed rooms, according to a Jan. 2005 article in the Daily Pennsylvanian. The working group at Brown looked at Penn's policy as a model for gender-neutral housing, Garrett said.
Ron Ozio, director of media relations at Penn, said students who request gender-neutral housing may live with whomever they choose, but he noted that "very, very few students at Penn do it." Less than one half of one percent of Penn students live in gender-neutral housing, Ozo said.
At Wesleyan University, Garrett said, mixed housing is available for all students, including incoming freshman. She added that, "no two schools are doing the same thing. We all kind of look at our own systems and see what works for the individual school."
The term gender-neutral housing can often mean very different housing arrangements in practice. At some institutions, like Dartmouth, gender-neutral housing means co-ed suites and apartments or program housing with a focus on gender identity issues. At Wesleyan, it includes co-ed doubles. Until recent discussions at Brown, the term referred to co-ed apartments and suites. Currently 20 percent of Brown's housing inventory is gender-neutral, Richard Bova, senior associate dean of residential life, told The Herald in September.
In discussions with administrators at many colleges, Garrett found that "no one has experienced any problems with heterosexual couples living together, breaking up and then putting a strain on the housing system," she wrote in her report. She goes on to write that everyone she spoke with said roommate conflicts in gender-neutral housing "were no more prevalent than the conflicts that exist in gender-segregated housing."
Katie Lamb '10, a member of the Gender-Neutral Housing Working Group, said she hopes in the future that students "won't have to worry about" gender when picking housing. Lamb said she hopes that on the housing lottery form "you won't even have to say I'm an 'm' and she's an 'f'. You'll just have to say we want to live together."
"The bottom line," she said "is [to make] as many people living on campus as comfortable as possible. We've proposed something that doesn't infringe on what's already going on, but allows something else."
Garrett, Klawunn and Bova also stressed that gender-neutral housing and living in co-ed doubles is optional and meant to allow students the greatest amount of choice. "Our goal is to house students in whatever configuration they can think of that best serves their comfort, safety and well-being," Bova said.
When asked about whether incoming first-year students would also have the option to live in a co-ed double, Carey said that it is "not actively under consideration." The recommendation for upperclass students to live in co-ed doubles, Carey said, "is much further along than any considerations for changing first-year housing policy." Incoming first-year students who would like to live in a co-ed double because of their gender identity will be accommodated on a "case-by-case basis as we need to," Carey added.
Klawunn said most schools have similar policies concerning first-year students. "There are very few schools that have done anything beyond the traditional placement for incoming students," she said.
Bova estimated that the earliest time by which incoming first-year students would be able to live in co-ed doubles would be in the fall of 2010. However, he added, "we're a ways off."
