The house model is not the only residential reform in Duke’s near future: RoomPicks may offer gender-neutral and coed housing options as soon as 2011.
Campus Council recommended policies for Residence Life and Housing Services to review at its last meeting Thursday. Gender-neutral housing will allow male and female students to live in the same apartment on Central Campus. Coed housing allows males to live next to females with single-gender bathrooms.
RLHS will consider the proposals immediately, said Joe Gonzalez, associate dean of residence life.
“We’ll begin the discussion [Tuesday],” Gonzalez said. “[This] is a topic we are genuinely interested in supporting, but now comes the real conversation to formalize our support level. I’m hopeful that we will be able to respond fairly quickly.”
Participants in gender-neutral housing would be placed in the same housing lottery as all other Central residents, according to the policy proposals.
Coed housing is currently proposed as a small, opt-in program on West Campus, similar to the Women’s Housing Option and the Wellness Community. If passed, coed housing will likely be offered in several locations throughout West Campus, Gonzalez said. RLHS hopes to organize the program in such a way that students choose to participate for reasons beyond the housing’s location.
“Clearly we prefer for the community program itself to appeal to students versus the location of the program,” Gonzalez said. “Just by the geography of our buildings, some areas [are] coed already—we have to see what architecture best allows for coed housing to determine how far to pursue it.”
“A more open place”
The goal of the policies is to provide students with the sort of housing experience that they want, said Steve Nowicki, dean and vice provost for undergraduate education.
Nowicki called the logistical decisions that RLHS will have to make manageable and noted that this sort of program is common among schools in the Northeast.
“I think this is a great idea,” he said. “To tell the truth, this is commonplace on college campuses—I was living in a true coed dorm in 1974.”
Gender-neutral policies will probably be beneficial in the transition to the house model, Nowicki said, adding that houses will to an extent have self-governance.
“In general, more freedom and fewer arbitrary rules is a good thing,” he said. “I would expect the typical house to be coed and if that distribution is room-by-room or floor-by-floor—[it’s up to the students.]”
The new proposals would broaden options for students, Gonzalez said, catering to the specific needs of certain students in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer community.
Senior Lauren Haigler, ad hoc member of Campus Council’s policy committee, spearheaded the creation of the gender-neutral and coed housing policies. She said she received the input of Blue Devil United’s president, Ollie Wilson, a junior, and senior Michelle Sohn, Duke Student Government liaison for gender studies and a member of The Chronicle’s Editorial Board.
The housing policies were largely motivated by a report from the LGBTQ Life for the 2010 Committee on Gender, Sohn said. Last Spring, the committee submitted a report to DSG, which voted to recommend that the University explore gender-neutral housing options.
“[The policies are] going to make Duke a more open place and give more housing options to everyone,” Haigler wrote in an e-mail. “It’s about accommodating everyone.”
Sohn also referenced an issue with a transgender student in 2007—when the student was forced to switch housing accommodations after complaints from students and parents—as a catalyst for the policies. Sohn added that the policies are meant to improve the residential experience of the entire Duke community.
“I can’t really say it will be attractive only to LGBTQ people or straight people,” she said. “[The] bottom line is we need housing to accommodate both men and women. We’re old enough to make a decision of how we want to live and who we want to live with.”
Wilson also noted the housing policy’s wide-spread benefits. He said it will more accurately reflect Duke’s non-discrimination policy and that it will benefit all of the University’s students.
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