<p>Do schools make an attempt to have openly gay students room with each other? I can't imagine that sexual orientation would be a box to check on a housing form. But I can see where some students would have a problem with the issue.</p>
<p>missypie, at my son’s school they do not have a box that you check off. During his freshman year one of my son’s friends (who is gay) had a room mate that just couldn’t deal with him being gay so he asked for a room change. They changed the room with no problem.</p>
<p>Most kids don’t care so much about the gay issues anymore like their parents. Since so many more kids are out when they are younger their peers see that they are just like them & not monsters.</p>
<p>No one is saying anything about them being monsters. But it’s kind of like the coed bathroom situation…one guy might look at a girl like a sister, while another might think she’s hot. The girl would probably be fine sharing a bathroom with the “brother” but not with a guy who was coming on to her. I doubt that anyone wants an “assigned” roommate who “likes” them, no matter what the gender. I guess if a student gets a situation he or she is uncomforatble with, they try to make a change.</p>
<p>Yes, there are schools that have that box to check.</p>
<p>Due to the sheer number of young men who still don’t grasp that not every gay man wants to jump them or that gay people have the same ability to behave appropriately when it comes to sexual attraction, this is an issue we take very seriously. </p>
<p>If a school does not offer co-ed or gay student housing, then it’s not a school we will consider. I’m simply unwilling to set my kid up to be a victim of homophobia at the hands of roommate or the roommates friends.</p>
<p>Thanks Pugmadkate.</p>
<p>At DS’s college, I found it interesting that the way they set up freshmen housing in his dorm was to put two boys in a room in an alcove with two girls, the four sharing a bathroom. I’ve tried not to worry about one of the girls jumping DS.</p>
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<p>My daughters would see that situation as quite unsatisfactory! At our house, we don’t have a parents’ bathroom and a kids’ bathroom…we have a girls’ and a boys’.</p>
<p>College provides for all kinds of growth.</p>
<p>It varies widely from school to school. At my son’s small liberal arts college, the freshman housing questionnaire had a box that asked for sex/gender orientation, had a question asking to him to rate on a scale of 1 - 5 whether a roommate’s sexual orientation was important to him, with a box for comments (with similar questions about political views, drug use, religion, music, sleeping habits, etc.). I don’t think there was any effort to match gay roommates, but there certainly was an effort to match those who would be comfortable living together. My son, who is straight, wouldn’t have much patience with a homophobic lug (though wouldn’t face the issues a gay kid would have with such a roommate.) The form also noted that unless the student agreed to share a bathroom with someone of the opposite sex, they would not be put in a co-ed bathroom situation. In addition, starting this year, for upperclassmen, the school is implementing gender neutral housing where the roommates/suitemates agree. (I can’t imagine how a large school would do all this – they would need a massive computer system to match folks.) So, I would echo the comments of the person posting above, that you should make sure your daughter looks at schools where the housing/bathroom situation will be comfortable. Many have housing options where the bathrooms are not coed. I know as a 17 year old college freshman, I would have been uncomfortable sharing a bathrrom with men I did not know, even though I shared one at home with my two brothers. I recall that MIT only had shared bathrooms. My only response was yuck.</p>
<p>“that gay people have the same ability to behave appropriately when it comes to sexual attraction”</p>
<p>lol, I thought love (regardless) is an “inappropriate behavior” to begin with</p>
<p>“My daughters would see that situation as quite unsatisfactory! At our house, we don’t have a parents’ bathroom and a kids’ bathroom…we have a girls’ and a boys’.”</p>
<p>Are you saying that you have two parents, a son and a daughter, and that the mother / daughter have one bathroom and the father / son have another bathroom? We have father / mother / daughter / son, but my husband and I have a bathroom and then my children (they are twins) share a bathroom.</p>
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On the contrary, I think there’s nothing quite like rooming with someone to kill any sort of attraction toward him/her. </p>
<p>My university does not attempt to room gay students together (thank goodness), and neither I nor anyone I know has had a problem with a homophobic roommate. Personally, I care a lot more about how tidy my roommate is and what time he goes to bed.</p>
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That’s eliminating an awful lot of good schools. Is he at least considering colleges that offer singles?</p>
<p>I believe NYU does have that as a option. they are a very LBGT friendly school</p>
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<p>We have two bathrooms, with two sinks each, upstairs (where the bedrooms are). Before there were kids, husband took the bathroom “down the hall” and I took the master. When the kids came along and got older, Son moved into husband’s bathroom and the girls use mine. I try to avoid going into the boys’ bathroom. The girls’ bathroom is neat and tidy. The boys’ bathroom…isn’t.</p>
<p>I have never heard of any college doing this, although I guess it happens. In any event, pugmadkate, I fear your son is going to find slim pickings if he limits himself to schools that offer gay student housing.</p>
<p>I’m sure there are occasional probelms, but I’m just as sure that the vast majority of the time there are no problems at all. Some friends of my daughter’s were involved in a situation that she was sure was going to be explosive: Friend A was assigned to room with Friend B when B’s prospective roommate decided to take a quarter off. My daughter knew both, but through very separate channels; they had never met each other. A was a foreign-born, hypermacho, aggressively conservative combat veteran, B a bookish, somewhat effeminate, ultra-left-wing gay man. They got along fine, zero drama.</p>
<p>Separately, I have never understood how people can actually exclude a college from consideration based on its bathroom configuration. Human beings are so adaptible! I can’t fathom restricting your experiences because of bathroom must-haves, short of some unusual physical disability.</p>
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That’s the big advantage to a guy of having a gay roommate. It’s something of a stereotype, but the gay men that I & my son have lived with have tended to be neat freaks with a knack for decorating.</p>
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<p>All your kid really needs is a single for freshman year.</p>
<p>Two places that have plenty of singles for freshman are Columbia and Cornell. </p>
<p>At Columbia, students almost always stay on campus all four years and often get stuck in doubles their sophomore year. But by the time of the housing lottery, most people have found compatible friends to room with for the next year. </p>
<p>At Cornell, singles are less readily available for sophomores than for freshmen, but this doesn’t matter much because students often move off campus as early as sophomore year, and most off-campus landlords will rent to any sort of group – including mixed-gender groups. Sometimes, the most comfortable living arrangement for a gay man is with female apartment-mates. There would be no problem making such an arrangement in the off-campus apartments near Cornell.</p>
<p>^^^^ that’s my brother to a TEE 
He’s not a college student, but he and his partner have the nicest tiny Manhattan apt I’ve ever seen!</p>
<p>If I could suggest a more practical approach. Why not focus the search on colleges and universities that are notably gay-friendly, rather than focus on the minutia of the freshman housing form? Think big picture first.</p>
<p>For example, Swarthmore is one of the most gay-friendly schools on earth, in ways that would probably knock your socks off. The students (gay and straight) veto’d a candidate for dean who refered to the need to “fully support alternative lifestyles”. The students took issue with the alternative reference. It was the first college to provide full employee insurance benefits for same-sex partners. And, so on and so forth. Gay friends of my daughter have nothing but enthusiasm for the school on that score.</p>
<p>But, I’m not completely sure that Swarthmore would meet the housing standard. There’s no theme housing of any kind. Not black housing. Not Asian housing. Not jock housing. Not gay housing. There’s a check box for “gay-friendly” as one of many attributes that can be marked on the first year housing form. Most housing is coed floors, same sex rooms, with separate bathrooms by gender. There are also single-sex housing floors available. And, there is one floor in one of the dorms with freshman rooms that is both gender neutral by room (can be mixed male/female) and by bathroom (used by either sex). There are three freshman doubles on that floor, but these would not be assigned to male/female pairs.</p>
<p>Again, I think you are formulating your questions about housing in a way that may not return the list of most gay-friendly colleges and universities in the country.</p>
<p>The University of Chicago also has plenty of singles available for freshman.</p>
<p>As I wrote elsewhere, this was one of reasons Chicago was always my son’s first choice. Not for reasons having to do with sexual orientation, but because he’s very much someone who needs a private place where he can be alone and recharge his batteries.</p>
<p>On his housing form that he filled in after he accepted the school’s offer last spring, there was certainly no check box for sexual orientation. That would have been every bit as contrary to the university’s non-discrimination policies, when it comes to housing, as a box that allows you to check your race (or the race of the person you’d prefer to have as a roommate). However, in the section for special requests, he did (at my suggestion) make it clear that rooming with someone who was homophobic would be a problem. Not that they would know who was or wasn’t homophobic, but this laid the groundwork by putting the school on notice in case there were any problems later on.</p>
<p>However, it was all academic, because he did get a single.</p>
<p>And has made many friends there, male and female, straight and gay, none of whom appears to care in the least about his sexual orientation. I really think that in many parts of the country, in many schools, this simply is not an issue anymore, and harassment based on homophobia wouldn’t be considered any more acceptable than, say, racist or anti-Semitic harassment. It’s not high school. (Not that my son had any problems there either.)</p>
<p>Pug, I’ve never heard of a college with “gay housing” in the dorms. Obviously, if and when people move off-campus in later years, they can live with whomever they want. There are some schools that make special accommodations for transgender-identified students (even if they’re not in the process of any kind of medical transition), in terms of giving them single rooms or putting them in gender-neutral housing, and providing access, if necessary, to gender neutral bathroom facilities. But gay housing? I’m not aware of it.</p>
<p>I don’t think you should worry too much about your son being harassed, though, as indicated above.</p>
<p>I also don’t think any straight person has to be worried about being put with a sexually predatory gay roommate. The idea of gay person as sexual predator who can’t restrain his or her impulses with respect to any member of the same sex may be common but is, I think, entirely mythical. It’s amazing how many straight people there are who just assume that all gay people of the same sex will (a) find them attractive, and (b) hit on them. The last thing any gay person would want would be to confirm stereotypes like that. Besides, as someone alluded to, there’s a real “incest taboo,” I think, that arises when young people share a room. It’s hard to see someone as a sexual object of desire in that situation, at least after a while. Finally, in the unlikely event of any problem, I’m sure room-switching would be possible.</p>
<p>Donna</p>
<p>PS: My son is gay, but is pretty much a typical slob of a teenage boy. Thereby destroying that particular stereotype! I hate to think what his dorm room looks like by now.</p>
<p>I guess if a student gets a situation he or she is uncomforatble with, they try to make a change.</p>
<p>I would think it more likely that they use it as a growing experience.</p>
<p>It’s something of a stereotype, but the gay men that I & my son have lived with have tended to be neat freaks with a knack for decorating.</p>
<p>oh I wish. 
I used to do * hair* so I admit my perspective is skewed, but I had expected that for all the homosexual men that D knew, * one of them* could have given her some fashion tips. ( they don’t dress as badly as some of the lesbians she knows- but still not the avid readers of WWD that I remember)</p>