If you were asked to guess which Ivy League school was the least likely to not have gender-neutral housing, you might guess Brown. You’d be wrong, but probably not for long: A petition to add a gender-neutral program will soon be submitted for approval, after issues with previous proposals:
GenderAction, a subgroup of Queer Alliance, aims to offer more comfortable housing to students who do not fit within the gender binary, said Maddy Jennewein ’14, co-president of GenderAction. Under the proposal, the gender-neutral option would be open to all incoming first-year students. Past proposals have failed due to a narrow focus on transgender issues, she said.
The current system is “a lot of work” for students who do not identify as strictly male or female because they have to negotiate with ResLife to change their room assignments, Jennewein said. “It seems like a small thing, but it’s a big barrier if students have to pick up the phone to call ResLife to get appropriate housing,” she said.
The gender-neutral movement began at smaller liberal arts colleges generally due to LGBT issues. In 2005, the University of Pennsylvania adopted gender-neutral housing as well; since then, the majority of the Ivy League and another 40 other schools have followed suit.
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