For the past several years residence life staff have been working to offer more all gender options in the residence halls. We have explored numerous possibilities and worked with various students to try and best meet the needs of students and make the residence halls as inclusive as possible for all. We are often asked about gender neutral housing, which usually means different things to different people. We have come to prefer the term all gender over gender neutral and have tried to separate out room assignments, bathroom designation, and special living options.

Rooms

• Residence Life has proposed and the College has approved opening up the following areas to housing students in bedrooms regardless of gender if the students choose this option(GCA, GDD, Kirk, Language Houses, Veggie Co-op, and Summit House).

Bathrooms

• Residence Life has worked to label all single-use common area bathrooms as All Gender.
• Some communities (Kirk sections and Veggie Coop) have had community discussions about bathroom designations and residence life staff have worked with students to change the bathroom designation from what it was when the students signed up to live in the space if the voting was anonymous and unanimous.
• For 2013-14, due to the larger numbers looking for all gender bathrooms in Kirk and the small number of students who are not comfortable with all gender bathrooms, we are working to pre-designate more sections with all gender bathrooms in the hopes that student can select the sections that best meet their needs and wants.

Special Living Options

• In 2009 we created a Special Living Option in a section in Kirk called All Gender Community. Currently this community is in section 1 of Kirk with an all gender bathroom. Students could apply to live in this space in advance of room draw. There were programming requirements for this space, similar to other SLO, to do two community events each semester and two programs for the campus community as well.
• In 2012, we made the option of an All Gender Community in Doty 1 available to incoming students. This community has an all gender bathroom and is similar to the All Gender Community in Kirk, except that there are no programming requirements for the first-year students in the this community.
• We are also exploring the possibility of creating an all gender community in Bigelow basement and possibly Bigelow 1st floor depending on student interest for 2013-14. We are currently surveying first year students to get a sense of the level of interest in this sophomore area.