National Student Genderblind Campaign

Last night, after Yale University administrators backed down from a plan to implement gender-neutral housing for the 2009-10 school year, over a dozen students braved the freezing weather to stage an outdoor ‘Sleep-in’. Setting up tents in the snow and ice of Yale’s Cross Campus quad, with signs that read “The Only Gender Neutral Housing at Yale”, members of the group Students for Housing Equality at Yale tenaciously demonstrated the need for an immediate change in policy. “The sleep-in is meant to protest the type of metaphorical displacement [that the] LGBT community and allies, are faced by this decision,” Rachel Schiff ‘10, the LGBT cooperative coordinator told the Yale Daily News.

Update: To find out more about Yale’s gender-neutral initiative, check out yale.genderblind.org. 

Credit: Susan Surface

The State University of New York (SUNY) at Geneseo has just announced a gender-neutral pilot program for one residence hall during the 2009-2010 academic year. This option will be available for this upcoming housing selection process. Now, students at SUNY Geneseo will be able to share bathrooms, common areas, and individual bedrooms. Previously, mixed-gender living arrangements were only available in apartment-style housing. Dean of Residential Living Celia Easton told The Lamron that the pilot serves two goals: “To provide a living space for friends to share regardless of gender and to adequately accommodate students whose gender identity does not correspond with a conventional label.”

SUNY Geneseo is part of the 64-campus state university system of New York. The largest comprehensive system of universities and colleges in the country, SUNY has nearly 400,000 undergraduate students. NSGC has been proud to work with several campuses within the SUNY system. Geneseo is the first SUNY campus to allow students to share the same individual room assignment. The editorial board of The Lamron said, “the policy is just the latest progressive measure in a long line of social improvements that began in the ’60s with civil rights and have been carried into the new millennium.”

The National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force have teamed up to collect data on discrimination against trans people in housing, employment, public accommodations, healthcare, education, family life and criminal justice.

In the wake of several murders of non-conforming youth in 2008 and the continued legislative efforts to pass a federal non-discrimination bill that includes gender-identity and expression, the two groups have collaborated with Pennsylvania State University’s Center for the Study of Higher Education to collect and analyze data. The survey will be helpful in developing better policies and practices for many areas of life. 

If you identify as gender non-conforming, transgender, or gender queer, take the survey! 

Emilia Dunham, Northeastern University ‘10

Major: Sociology

Minor: Women’s Studies / Law, Policy & Society

What motivated you to work on a gender-neutral housing campaign at Northeastern?

“Personally, housing has been a huge issue of mine since coming to college. I was vaguely aware of Gender Neutral Housing programs at other schools only after the middle of my first year. I realized the need for more options, particularly for transgender students.During the housing application process, I approached Residential Life about options for transgender students, and found they were remarkably limited. The next year I publically spoke about my housing experiences at a student/faculty panel I helped organize. By my third year, the issue of Gender Neutral Housing became a hot topic as it reached the Student Government Association (SGA). 

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 After two years, the University of Chicago decided last month to allow upper-class students to select a roommate of any gender in all campus housing, except those that are already same-sex only. The pilot program, called “Open Housing” will be implemented in January 2009 with full implementation expected by Fall 2009. The University of Chicago says that, “The policies and experiences of these and other institutions (with gender-neutral housing) were helpful in guiding our decision-making.” Referring to the successful policy change, Antonia Clifford, Director of the UChicago’s Queers and Associates told the Chicago Maroon, “[The outcome says to me] ‘this isn’t just an issue for transgender students, but all students.’”

Over in Boston, Northeastern University’s Resident Student Association announced that gender-neutral housing will be piloted in one building beginning in the 2009-2010 academic year with the hope of extending the program to other halls in the future.The University of Chicago and Northeastern have undergraduate populations of 4,900 and 15,000, respectively.