BY ARIEL MARTINO

In print | Published March 6, 2008

The Housing Committee has formulated a proposal for the creation of gender-neutral halls in the basement of Willets Hall and the first floor of David Kemp Hall starting next fall. The proposal was presented to Myrt Westphal, the associate dean for student life, who was optimistic about the expansion of options for gender-neutral housing.

Liz Derickson ’01, housing coordinator and member of the Housing Committee, cited the shortage of gender-neutral housing options available to sophomores as a reason behind the change. “[The housing lottery] offers a degree of autonomy to upperclassmen, but sophomores are often limited in their choices,” Derickson said.

Currently, there are several gender-neutral halls with gender-neutral bathrooms located off-campus in Mary Lyon, Palmer, Pittenger, Roberts, Strath Haven and Woolman. On campus, however, the options are more limited: Worth, the Lodges and Wharton CD all have gender-neutral housing with full-service bathrooms, while the second floor of both Dana and Hallowell have gender-neutral rooms but not bathrooms. According to Dominic Lowell ’08, a member of the housing committee and RA in Worth, this accounts for only about 20 percent of the housing on campus. “Further, dorms like Wharton CD and Worth, the bulk of gender-neutral housing on campus are unavailable to sophomores, the group seen as wanting gender-neutral housing options the most,” Lowell said.

Comparatively, according to Derickson, Haverford has gender-neutral housing as an option in the vast majority of its dorms.

Adding gender-neutral halls in Willets and David Kemp will provide another option for sophomores who may not have a high enough lottery number to live in Wharton or Worth and who do not want to live off-campus. Nearly a third of the sophomore class lives in Willets, making it an obvious candidate for offering a gender-neutral housing option.

The Housing Committee believes that David Kemp is also a good location for additional on-campus gender-neutral housing. The floor plan of David Kemp includes a breezeway, dividing the first floor, with a bathroom on each side. This may cause inconvenience for males who may have to cross the breezeway to use a gendered bathroom on the other side and vice versa. Derickson called this a “prime location for gender-neutral [housing]” because of the lack of gender-neutral halls in both Alice Paul and Mertz. Also, according to the housing committee proposal, David Kemp Hall’s compliance with the American Disabilities Act was a huge draw in order to provide facilities that are both handicap accessible and gender-neutral.

However, some students are uncomfortable with the prospect of introducing gender-neutral housing. Even if students living on a gender-neutral hall have a roommate of the same gender, in Willets and David Kemp they may have to share a bathroom with members of the opposite gender.

Cleanliness is the foremost issue for most females, as many women say that men have very different standards of cleanliness. Willets resident Sylvia Boateng ’11 worried about exposure, pointing out the fact that there are only flimsy shower curtains, not actual doors on the showers, adding that there are “barely doors on the bathroom.”

Other students share concerns of exposure. “It’s necessary to re-vamp the existing bathrooms before you ask for a change,” Willets resident Sable Mensah ’11 said.

Zebi Brown ‘09, an RA in Willets, said that while "some people may feel uncomfortable in so-called ’ungendered housing,’ others may not feel comfortable anywhere else."

Derickson believes that the concerns over the facilities should not stand in the way of making the campus more inclusive. “This college has made a commitment to not discriminate against folks on the basis of sexual identity,” Derickson said. In the spirit of inclusiveness, the college recently added gender identity to its Equal Opportunity Clause. Last semester, McCabe Library instated its first gender-neutral bathroom in what was formerly a men’s room on the second floor. Many single bathrooms around campus, including one in Parrish, are also gender-neutral.

It seems that many students are ready for a shift to more ungendered bathrooms. The housing form for the class of 2011 featured a question about the gendering of bathrooms.

The question had three options: preferred gender-neutral bathrooms, indifferent and preferred separate gendered bathrooms. Over 45 percent of the respondents stated that they were indifferent, indicating openness to gender-neutral bathrooms.

Lowell, himself a resident of an gender-neutral hall in Worth said that he enjoyed “living in a dorm that welcomes both those who fit neatly into a gendered category and those who don’t,” adding that, to his knowledge “there have been no problems in Worth or the Lodges this year surrounding gender-neutral housing or bathrooms.”

While only two percent of respondents stated that they prefer gender-neutral bathrooms, that number indicates a desire for the option of ungendered bathrooms on campus, a desire that Derickson believes will grow in the coming years. “Gendering of bathrooms is constantly in flux,” Derickson said.

In order to keep up with the preferences of the student body, the Housing Committee is doing a comprehensive survey of students. Derickson hopes that the survey will help “get a sense of students desires, needs and expectations.”

“This campus needs to be more trans-inclusive,” Cecilia Marquez ’11 said, adding that it is important to be able to elect in and out of gender-neutral halls.

A question the Housing Committtee faces with regard to this issue is whether gender-neutral bathrooms will deter students from living on certain halls. “When students choose housing, they usually use a geographic hierarchy,” Derickson said, explaining that proximity to the center of campus and proximity to friends are the two most important factors students think about when choosing housing. Coupled with the data about the number of people indifferent to gender-neutral bathrooms, Derickson does not think ungendered bathrooms will change the housing lottery drastically.

Despite the proposed changes, the vast majority of first-year students will not be placed on gender-neutral halls, especially those that elect out of gender-neutral housing on the housing survey.

“No one will be forced to live with a roommate of the opposite sex or gender,” Lowell said. “Students who would still prefer to live with their own gender or sex may do so.”

By the same token, the proposal will promote more desirable living options on campus, an initiative that Lowell believes is “leveling the playing field.”

According to Brown, the top priority of the proposal is to make sure “students feel safe and comfortable in the space they’re living in.”

“It’s important for students to be able to make informed, mature decisions on their own about their housing and their roommate since we, as students, spend so much time in our rooms and deserve to have the most positive of living experiences,” Lowell said.

Derickson is confident that the proposal will be in place in time for next fall, citing gender-neutral housing as being one of the “necessary steps to making [Swarthmore] a more inclusive place.”

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