Though Tufts shot down the idea three years ago, co-ed dorm rooms have increasingly come to be viewed as plausible housing arrangements for college students. Policies allowing students of the opposite sex to share a dorm room have been instituted at schools such as Haverford College, Wesleyan University, Hampshire College, and, most recently, Swarthmore College.
The issue of co-ed roommates was controversial subject at Tufts three years ago, when TTLGBC culture representatives Kat Cheung and Carl Sciortino lobbied the administration to change Tufts' policy.
"For the LGBT community, the need to live in single-gender facilities was forcing them into tension-filled situations," Dean of Students Bruce Reitman said. But nothing came out of the discussions, as "Tufts is able to address co-habitation without resorting to" co-ed dorm rooms, Reitman said.
Then-President John DiBiaggio said at the time that even though the University created a supportive community for LGBT students, student concerns could be addressed "on a case-by-case basis _ without digressing from University housing policy...which states that dorm rooms are single-gender."
DiBiaggio's statement still stands, but Reitman said that Tufts' commitment to ensuring the comfort of its students living situations "goes beyond that." Individuals who feel uncomfortable living with a roommate of the same gender have multiple options available to them.
"Anyone who really needs it can get a single room," Reitman said. Although freshman are normally not allowed to live in singles, "if someone presented needs to us, including those of the LGBT community," it would be seriously considered."
The University also provides the Rainbow House, a cultural housing option for LGBT students. The Rainbow House has an environment "such that people can create comfortable living situations," Reitman said. The University has promised to make the Rainbow House "as large as it would ever have to be" to accommodate as many LGBT students as needed.
Despite the availability of single rooms and the Rainbow House, the Tufts Transgender Lesbian Gay and Bisexual Collective (TTLGBC) still feels that mixed-sex dorm rooms should eventually be considered.
"It is always something LGBT students are aware of, and people have discussed taking the issue up again with [the] administration," TTLGBC Culture Representative Kelly Sanborn said. The issue, "directly affects the [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] community because some straight students don't feel comfortable with [non-heterosexual] students as roommates, and vice versa," Sanborn said.
Instituting co-ed dorm rooms, however, would create a variety of issues for the University. It would have to figure out how to reorganize the housing plan, whether to offer first-year students the option, and deal with parents' inevitable concern. Another negative, Reitman said, is that instituting a co-ed dorm room policy might "force students to out themselves in order to opt for it."
Although acceptance is increasing, the issue of mixed-gender rooming remains a deeply divisive one. "A lot of people don't think it's moral, in any way, shape, or form," Gary Scwarzmueller, executive director of the Association of College and University Housing Officers said in an FSView article. In the same article, Vice President of Student Affairs at Washington and Jefferson College Jeffrey Docking said "the idea of asking students to learn how to cohabit is frankly irresponsible."
Swarthmore College allowed students to live in co-ed lodges last year, and this fall, seven two-person rooms were offered as co-ed. "I think the biggest problem that people see is that heterosexual couples might move into co-ed housing," Renee Willemssen-Goode, Swarthmore's Housing Committee member, said in the Swarthmore Phoenix. "But, I think that most people recognize the need to avoid that just in case something might happen to a relationship."
In May, The New York Times reported that at at Haverford College, where co-ed rooming was instituted two years ago, the catalyst to bring about co-ed dorm rooms came from "gay groups that said it was 'heterosexist' to require roommates to be of the same sex.
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