Championing equality, Yale students demonstrate for inclusive policy
Mar 4th
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.
First State University in New York approves gender-neutral rooming pilot
Feb 16th
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.”