<p>Many of you know me as a frequent poster on this forum. I’d like to enlist the support of this entire CC Brown community on the issue of gender-neutral housing for first-year students at Brown. Currently, gender-neutral housing is available for students only after their first year. This would be an opt-in program (similar to single-sex, quiet, or sub-free housing) offering genderqueer/trans students and their allies a housing system where the legal gender of the student would not be taken into account when deciding roommate assignments.</p>
<p>Currently, GenderAction, the group spearheading this campaign, has a petition set up. Your comments will anonymously be sent to ResLife once they have been collected, and will be an important part of this process. GenderAction is looking for current students, parents, alumni, and even prospective students to talk about how this change would impact them and why they support it.</p>
<p>I believe Penn just implemented gender-neutral housing for their freshmen, starting next year. I’m not sure about other schools - I know that Penn was the first Ivy to offer it for freshmen. You’d be best contacting the leader of GenderAction.</p>
<p>As a current student, all I can say is “you have got to be kidding me”??? Isn’t this school ridiculous enough with all of it’s liberal BS? What about the kids at the other end of the spectrum? Is there no respect for their values and ideals? I love this school, but sometimes the liberal crap goes way too far and crosses lines of decency. I know I am going to get hammered on this forum, but I am so sick and tired of this type of thought being pushed on college students. You have the rest of your life to live as you wish. Why push your agenda on kids? So no, I’ll never go for this and think it crosses so far over the line it is insane!</p>
<p>Very good post. As an old guy (age 56), my initial impression is that this proposal is crazy. I am glad at least some college students feel the same way. If I had a daughter, I wouldn’t want her to be forced to have a male roomate.</p>
<p>It specifically says opt in…as in do it if you want. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. It’s a fairly simple concept. I’m still in high school, but I believe all schools (at least non-religious ones) should have options like this for those gender queer/trans students on campus.</p>
<p>I get opt-in, not even confused by the meaning. By agenda, not confused by this one either, I mean a persuasive culture that is attempting to mainstream and normalize lifestyles that MAY be better suited off of a college campus. I know, not PC, but I am entitled to an opinion especially when the subject is posted on a public forum regarding my school.</p>
<p>If either of you could articulate what this has to do with ‘political correctness’, I’d love to hear it. What does offering people the option to room with opposite-sex classmates have to with being ‘politically correct’. I understand that complaining about ‘political correctness’ is an important page from the conservative-muckraker handbook, but let’s leave that to times when the label actually makes sense, k?</p>
<p>(@FloridaDad: It’s a symptom of the Fox-News-ification of conservative America that you could even for one second think that Brown was going to impose this on all students. Try to step back and think about things a bit critically before you complain about them.)</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that most people in my generation – and I’m older than the current college students – accept the life led by our gay/lesbian/transgendered/queer/etc. friends. And at least a sizable minority of us think that people who reject those people’s right to lead their lives in the way that they want to are ‘bigots’, in the same way that people with racist beliefs are ‘bigots’.</p>
<p>Why should it be ‘bigoted’ to oppose a lifestyle on moral grounds? It’s not. But what is bigoted is picking and choosing your moralistic crusades in a way that labels a group as inferior and suggests that they deserve less than yourself. I have trouble seeing statements like “normalize lifestyles that MAY be better suited off of a college campus” as anything other than bigoted. It’s not the fornicators that you want off campus, not the envious, not the slothful, no, it’s the gays. That viewpoint is basically unacceptable on Brown’s campus today, as it should be. That’s not political correctness, that’s not an agenda, that’s progress in a campaign against hate.</p>
<p>Is this idea to have a simple opt-in policy and the assumption is that incoming students would be mature about why they were choosing to live with a member of the opposite sex or would there be some sort of screening process? In my experience when they introduced gender neutral housing to the upperclassmen, there weren’t any real issues, but I’m not 100% convinced yet that incoming freshmen being assigned to someone they don’t know are the same as soph-seniors mutually agreeing to live with someone. Maybe a screening process would be even worse, I don’t know. I’m just curious if anyone on here is involved in this movement and can share, or if any current students can report on what’s being said on campus. The facebook link is not working for me.</p>
<p>I’m minorly involved with this process and know many of the leaders. The assumption is that incoming students would know that they’re just opting into a genderless type of random housing. They won’t necessarily be housed with someone of the opposite gender; it’s that we’ll be taking gender (and legal sex) out of the issue. The problem is that for many trans students, their identified gender is different from their legal sex.</p>
<p>^
I totally understand the intention with regard to transgendered students I’m just wondering what happens if someone is thinking “I’m cool with rooming with a homosexual or transgendered student whose genitals are different from mine (I’m assuming that if you’re post op you’re legally the new gender), but not a heterosexual of the opposite sex.” Can a student make such a claim or are their options limited to the current system or just rolling the dice with the new one? Is this whole process going to be such a small minority that it’s not even worth worrying about what I’m talking about?</p>
<p>Basically, we wouldn’t be letting students make that claim. We’re assuming that if you’re cool rooming with a trans student, you should be cool rooming with anyone.</p>
<p>It’s probably going to be a very small minority of trans*/genderqueer students and people involved in the ally community. I’m a complete supporter of the measure, but I don’t think that I would have participated, personally. However, your worry has come up.</p>
<p>I personally think it’s important that students who are having questions regarding gender, sex, and sexuality even before they arrive at college are placed into a supportive environment with a roommate who is open to sharing what is otherwise a challenging experience.</p>