Students Acting for Gender Equality (SAGE) earlier this semester submitted a proposal to the administration for the creation of gender-neutral housing at Tufts. The proposal, titled "Recommendations for Gender Neutral Housing at Tufts" outlined an "option in which two or more students may share a multiple-occupancy bedroom, in mutual agreement, regardless of the students' sex or gender."
While the administration seems to have put the proposal on the backburner, for the remainder of this semester at least, we at the Daily believe Tufts should implement gender-neutral housing because it would carry a myriad of benefits for students both within and outside the LGBT community. Perhaps most importantly, gender-neutral housing would provide a safe, inclusive environment for transgender students, a population that — albeit small — is far too often segregated from the rest of the Tufts community.
Currently, the housing options for transgender students are too limited, especially for freshman students. Explicitly listed options for freshman students who identify as transgender include either living in a single occupancy room or sharing a room with someone of the same legal gender. This means that transgender students who wish to live with a roommate their freshman year — a fundamental part of the freshman living experience — must enter into a housing situation that is potentially fraught with awkwardness and conflict. Students who identify with any segment of the LGBT community should not be forced to choose between the isolating experience of living in a single and the uncomfortable experience of sharing a room with a potentially hostile stranger.
If freshmen were able to opt into gender-neutral housing, it would far decrease the likelihood that transgender students in their first year at Tufts — indeed all freshman LGBT students — would be paired with a roommate who does not accept their lifestyle. Beyond the first year, upperclassmen would also benefit from the inclusion of a gender-neutral housing option. Currently, mixed-gender housing on campus is limited to the 10 students who occupy the Rainbow House, the Hillsides Apartments suite organized by the LGBT Center. This is not nearly big enough to meet the needs of all students who would choose to live in gender-neutral housing, a population that not only includes individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered but to the straight community as well.
Additionally, choosing to live in the Rainbow House constitutes an overt admission of one's affiliation with the LGBT community. To be sure, the Rainbow House is open to both LGBT students and straight students allied with the LGBT community, yet students should not be forced to publicly admit their affiliation with the community in order to partake in a mixed-gender living environment. Gender-neutral housing would provide a living experience that is more inclusive and less self-segregating than the Rainbow House, and it would provide LGBT students with a living environment that still meets their needs but that isn't so restricted to the LGBT community.
Several other universities, including Brandeis University and Connecticut College, have implemented gender-neutral housing programs that could provide models for a program here at Tufts. These programs give students the flexibility to live with whomever they choose without forcing them to identify with a particular on-campus group.
Tufts is a university that prides itself on its diverse student body, and the creation of a gender-neutral housing option is a logical step toward including — rather than segregating — students of all lifestyles.
