<p>BAy-- it’s not the same. In the first case, the student is not asking to not room with a straight person. So not equivalent to someone asking to not room with a gay person.</p>
<p>Edit–I might have double negatived all the meaning right out of that…but I *think *it says what I mean.</p>
<p>The gender neutral housing is all about letting adults choose who they live with to optimize what they consider to be the best living arrangement. How radical. And in my humble opinion not limiting it to the GBLT community means you don’t treat anyone different and don’t have to get into discussions that are frankly nobody’s business. It is just as bad an idea for a sophomore gay couple to live together in a dorm room as it is a sophomore heterosexual couple. Both are discouraged in the gender neutral housing situations.</p>
<p>garland 
I understood it totally</p>
<p>azalia: you make an excellent point!</p>
<p>“I shudder to think what this poster believes this entirely imaginary trans person looks like.”</p>
<p>Um, I’ve actually met several ftm transgendered people who “look like dudes.” I think that’s what they’re going for. </p>
<p>The point of that paragraph is that the only instance I could see co-ed housing being a human rights issue for trans and/or gay people, is in the case of a trans person wanting to room with the opposite biological sex, for purpose of presenting as their gender or transitioning less awkwardly. </p>
<p>I fail to see why simply rooming with the opposite sex, in any other case, would decrease discomfort. </p>
<p>Certainly everyone has people they’d “prefer” to live with, and if it’s simply presented as a student freedom of choice issue, then why the heck not. But I kinda have a problem with it being this GLBT rights issue. Since I don’t really see how it’s related, except in the case of trans people, for the reason I mentioned, yes. If a person is homophobic, it’s no different than a black guy being put in a room with a white guy who is racist, or a very religious person being put with a domineering athiest (or vice versa), etc. etc. In those cases, you request a roommate switch, not co-ed housing? If a person is being discriminated for the presentation of their gender, then again that has to do with the extreme example I mentioned, of someone who is very masculine not feeling comfortable or feeling alienated in a very feminine atmosphere, or vice versa.</p>
<p>Ah ha. You were talking about trans guys. Reason for the misinterpretation: your preceding sentence, saying “you may not have legally changed your sex but would still want to live with and present as your sex,” made me think you were talking about people wanting to live as their target gender despite not having legally transitioned, rather than living as their birth gender, and, therefore, were talking about mtf trans people rooming with female students. Apologies for the confusion – I understand that it’s easy to be misinterpreted when talking about these things.</p>
<p>I dunno about others, but for me, it has little to do with homosexuality. I’m gay myself, but I personally would want to room with girls because I seem to have more female friends than male friends, and I actually know a few girls that are still looking for a roommate or two. I have little problem rooming with guys aside from the initial “Are they homophobic?” tension; for me it’s simply, “Hey, I have female friends that need a roommate. I don’t have male friends that do. I wish we could room together!”.</p>
<p>Yukichin: I know what you’re talking about. I think part of the move to coed options at colleges is a changing set of values about the appropriate or common relationships between men and women. When I was in college, it was assumed that one only had opposite sex friends until one had an opposite sex romantic partner, and then that heterosexual pair bond took precedence over any other mixed friendships. These days, my children have close friends of both sexes, completely aside from romantic relationship. I also have a lot of friends who have that same sort of model, but didn’t have it when they were younger.</p>
<p>This is all just a secret test by the Pentagon to learn some of the challenges they will confront in the barracks once the Clinton policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is lifted by Obama. I am sure these schools are being paid millions from some black budget.</p>
<p>I think there are a number of colleges in addition to those we have mentioned so far that offer the option of mixed-sex dorm rooms.</p>
<p>One I know of is the UChicago. The option is only offered to 2nd years and above. You have to specially request it–no one is forced to live with someone of the opposite sex.</p>
<p>I think (not totally sure) that the option is only offered in those dorms that have coed bathrooms (very common at U of C) or that have suite-type bathrooms.</p>
<p>If I remember correctly, I read an article that said that only about 2% of students took advantage of the option.</p>
<p>I say “live and let live” and if the idea makes you uncomfortable, don’t do it.</p>
<p>We know that effectively Stanford has the option, too. Not officially, but there are several “co-op” dorms that do their own room assignments and permit co-ed groupings. There was a big stink about this last year when a conservative columnist found out her daughter had male roommates (and the daughter may not have leveled with her mother that she had chosen that situation, not had it imposed on her).</p>
<p>Harvard and (I believe) many residential colleges at Yale have blocking-group systems that let men and women share suites, and don’t necessarily police who sleeps where.</p>