Correction appended
Following the lead of a handful of Oregon colleges, University Housing is exploring the possibility of creating a gender inclusive housing option for University students.
Sandra Schoonover, the director of residence life, and Chicora Martin, with Student Life, are beginning to research the subject in the hopes of developing a proposal sometime soon in which different genders will be able to share a room.
Schoonover said they may implement the option as early as fall 2009, but have not determined a clear timeline yet.
“The goal is to get something moving … and make (gender-inclusive housing) available as soon as possible,” Martin, the director of Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Educational Support Services Program, said.
Martin said she has been following the trend towards offering “gender neutral” or “gender-inclusive” housing on university campuses across the country, which has already appeared in several Northwest universities, including Oregon State University.
Schoonover and Martin said they recently began investigating the most appropriate way of implementing a gender-inclusive housing option.
“We need to look at the benefits, concerns … and how it would look on the campus,” Martin said.
The University started making the residence hall buildings co-ed in the late 1970s to early 1980s, said University Housing Marketing Director Tenaya Meaux. Currently the Living Learning Center, Riley and H.P. Barnhart all have co-ed floors because their rooms have individual bathrooms.
Schoonover said they will be researching other universities who have implemented a similar housing option, such as OSU, which launched its pilot program for gender inclusive housing this year.
The gender-inclusive hall at OSU “is a suite-style living environment where two to four students share two rooms and a common bath/shower facility,” according to the pilot program outline.
Cindy Empey, the director of residential education at OSU, said the program there has had “no problems at all” so far.
This year 12 OSU students chose the gender inclusive housing option, but there are around 48 students who have requested the option for next year. This fall OSU will be expanding the program to meet the new demand by opening a whole hall, Empey said.
Empey said students choose this option because of gender identity issues, to live with friends of the opposite sex or to room with a significant other. She anticipates siblings will opt for this in the future.
D.J. Zissen, a sophomore at OSU, lives in the gender-inclusive wing. He decided to live in that wing because he supported the program and wanted to help it grow.
“For me it is just like living anywhere else … If you can live off campus with whomever you want, why not on?” Zissen said.
Empey said that part of the reason for offering this option was to compete with off-campus living options. There was also a big push from the OSU student government’s Queer Affairs Task Force, she said.
Many students at the University feel that offering gender inclusive housing options would be beneficial.
“People do it off campus all the time,” said freshman Cami White, “It would give students more freedom.”
Freshman Nadia Thorpe, who lives in a co-ed hall in Riley, enjoys her hall and has no problem with her male hall mates, though she does not think it is a good idea for members of the opposite sex to share rooms.
Quinn Robinson, co-director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Alliance, said that gender-inclusive housing may increase students’ access to University Housing.
Quinn Robinson was mistakenly misrepresented in this article. Robinson did not say that gender-inclusive housing would give students with gender identity issues more accessibility. It has been corrected to say that gender-inclusive housing may increase students’ access to University Housing. The Emerald regrets the error.
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Co-Ed Challenges
Daily Emerald
April 16, 2008
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