Talking Stick - July/August 2011 - 43

Making Gender-Neutral Housing Work

building. This makes it easy for us to add more spaces in this area if interest grows from one year to the next.”

Making Appropriate Changes
For new gender-neutral or genderinclusive programs, the room selection or assignment processes may need to be amended. “Since our continuing students are able to select roommates regardless of gender, it is only necessary for our ﬁrst-year students, who are assigned roommates based on legal sex. On the housing

to allow us to educate new freshmen so they would know what to expect and to understand and be on board with the learning outcomes model,” says Walker. Cole explains that, at the University of Connecticut, the option had not been previously available to ﬁrst-year students, but that is changing: “This year we now have this option available for new, incoming undergraduate students if they want it. However, since this area isn’t in our traditional area for new freshmen students we haven’t

received many requests from new students for this option. Interest from new incoming freshmen may change in the future, since they can now request the option on their housing applications.” Applying for gender-inclusive housing at the University of California, Santa Barbara involves a process separate from other room assignment and selection processes. “As we started the program, we quickly decided that
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Applying for gender-inclusive housing at the University of California, Santa Barbara involves a process separate from other room assignment and selection processes.
preference form, there is a box they can check to indicate they would like an exception to this process,” Koerting explains. New programs, such as the one at Western Washington, may implement a restriction that allows staff to have contact with ﬁrst-year students to ensure they are making a choice that best suits their needs. “We have restricted the cluster to returning or upper-class residents, but freshmen may submit appeals, and we have already had two which we have approved. The restriction was intended

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Talking Stick - July/August 2011

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