Students Seek Coed Rooms at Stanford
Students of the opposite sex have shared dorm rooms on the sly for decades, but Stanford University housing officials are now discussing a way to bless the arrangements.
The idea is less Sodom and Gomorrah than Will & Grace, say those behind the movement. They say they aren't seeking hormone-fueled hookups but places where straight, gay and transgender students can feel at home with whatever gender they choose.
"It is not about sex," said Katherine Roubos, a 22-year-old international relations major who organized the "Genderblind Task Force" of Stanford students who recently met with housing officials. "Our motivation is that to be a healthy student, you need to feel comfortable in your living space."
The movement builds on Stanford's decision in September to expand its nondiscrimination policies to protect students who may be biologically one gender, but identify with the other.
Although students have pressed for coed rooms for years, they say the new language grants them the right to live with whatever gender they most identify with - platonically or otherwise.
Throughout much of Stanford's history, students mingled mostly at mixers. But in recent years, the sexes have grown more chummy. First came coed dormitories in 1966. Next came coed floors, even unisex bathrooms. Bedrooms - what else is left to integrate? - are the final frontier.
If it adopts "gender-blind" housing as a student option, Stanford would join a small but growing number of colleges that are modifying policies to accommodate male and female students who want to live together. It is already available at about 30 schools, including Dartmouth, Cal Tech, New York University, Ithaca and Swarthmore.
"It's not that radical," Roubos said.
But other colleges - including Duke, Tufts, William and Mary, and the University of North Carolina - have considered the idea, then dumped it.
At the University of California-Berkeley, only residents of the Unity House, a themed program focused on students' gender and sexuality, can have roommates of the opposite sex.
Stanford men and women can only be roommates in cooperative houses, where the university ignores living arrangements, or in couples' housing in Escondido Village. Housing officials have sought to accommodate transgender students on an individual basis, rather than implementing gender-neutral housing for the entire Stanford population.
The proposed "gender-blind" policy at Stanford is propelled by a group of several dozen transgender students and their allies - both gay and straight.
Sophomore Eric Tran, 19, says that he'd take advantage of such housing. He says many of his best friends are women and that he feels uncomfortable in the machismo setting of all-male dorm rooms and locker rooms.
Senior Laura Hyde, who is straight, said she'd just rather live with guys. Before college "I had never lived with girls before," she said. "I have a brother and I was more comfortable and felt more like I could be myself living with boys.
"Why shouldn't I have this option?" she asked. "Because someone thinks men and women can't live together without ‘shacking up'? Doesn't living with people who are different from you foster understanding and respect?"
Young men and women who already live together are also pushing the issue, saying they have the same rights as gays, bisexuals and transgenders.
"Couples who want to live together are people too," said Ellen Cassidy, 20, an English major who is straight but lives with her boyfriend in a gay co-op. "I don't understand why a situation like mine is any less worthy of accommodation than other minorities that would benefit from gender-blind housing."
Tuition-paying parents haven't weighed in yet. And the Stanford Conservative Society says the average student is happy with the status quo. "Few people are really pushing for a change," said freshman Thomas Schultz of the society. "A campus-wide housing policy would be excessive."
Schultz, 19, said that the drama of mid-semester breakups would put an additional burden on housing officials. And even though it is an opt-in policy, he worries about "creepy guys who might exploit women - men with ill intentions."
Others are concerned that it could trigger new headaches for officials who already fend off complaints by students crammed into tight spaces with complete strangers. And they caution that it could further complicate the school's compliance with the federal government's Title IX - which requires gender equity in living arrangements?
But proponents say it could create a more happy and healthy campus.
"I think we are way too early in this discussion to begin talking more broadly or publicly about this topic," said Rodger Whitney, student housing director. "We are just starting to delve into the issue at this point."
Even with a move toward gender-blind housing, backers say, Stanford will never turn into Shack-Up U.
"If students were in it just for sex," Tran said, "I don't think that they would do something so drastic as move in with each other."
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