The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 42, No. 2 - 78

Deborah J. Taub * R. Bradley Johnson * Torry Reynolds

part, this housing option has developed in response to the growing understanding that sex
and gender are not the same. Whereas sex is a
biological concept, gender is a cultural concept
(Newhouse, 2013; Stryker, 2008). Gender
identity is one's internal sense of who one is,
which may or may not match one's biological
sex (Stryker, 2008). As the understanding of
gender has become more nuanced, the need
has arisen for college and university housing
to recognize more than the biological sex of
campus residents.

DEVELOPMENT OF GENDERNEUTRAL HOUSING
Gender-neutral housing has been a topic of
discussion in college and university student
housing for the past decade. A 2003 article
in The Chronicle of Higher Education noted the
implementation of what it deemed "a 'gender
blind' hall, apparently the ﬁrst transgender
college housing in the nation" (Hoover, 2003,
para. 1). Not too long afterward, Bleiberg
(2004) advocated for the practice in a "Point
of View" in The Journal of College and University Student Housing, arguing that it is "the next
step in the progression of inclusive policies at
colleges and universities" (p. 8). ACUHO-I's
Talking Stick ﬁrst explored the topic of GNH
in 2006 (Miyamoto, 2006); at that time,
readers' feedback indicated a desire to hear
more about it (Miyamoto, 2007). In 2007 Miyamoto indicated that "gender-neutral housing
options have developed slowly, expanding
more rapidly in the past ﬁve years" (p. 43). The
ACUHO-I Standards and Ethical Principles for
College & University Housing Professionals publication (Association of College and University Housing Ofﬁcers-International, 2014) also
addressed GNH by including a standard that
78

college and university housing administrations "create gender-neutral speciﬁc housing
where feasible" (p. 14).
There is, however, limited information
about how GNH is actually being implemented or even how many institutions offer this
housing option. The College Equality Index
(CEI, n.d.) lists 38 schools that offer GNH,
though they provide no deﬁnition of what
GNH is considered to be. Clark (2009) examined the ACUHO-I housing assignments
survey, based on responses from more than
180 participants, and reported that approximately 30% of respondents had some form of
gender-neutral housing. Based on the number
of responses to that survey, this would indicate that approximately 54 of the responding
institutions offered this option in some form.
Most recently, the Campus Pride Trans Policy
Clearinghouse (2015) reported that 199 colleges and universities offer GNH (as of October
23, 2015), though the methodology used to
obtain this number is not reported. Campus
Pride's deﬁnition of what they prefer to call
gender-inclusive housing is stated as "housing
in which students can have a roommate of any
gender" (para. 1). The research literature on
GNH is extremely sparse. Willoughby, Larsen,
and Carroll (2012) explored the prevalence of
gender-neutral housing in a sample of 148
higher education institutions obtained in two
separate samples. The ﬁrst sample was of the
100 U.S. universities with the largest enrollment that offered on-campus housing. The
second sample was of 48 institutions that
offered GNH but were not included in the ﬁrst
sample; this list was generated by "a referral,
snowball sampling method where schools
that were contacted for having gender-neutral

THE JOURNAL OF COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY STUDENT HOUSING

The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 42, No. 2

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