Gender-blind housing at Macalester is back on the table nearly a year after a blitz of media coverage sparked widespread disagreement and stalled discussions on the issue.

A report on how other colleges have responded to the housing concerns of transgender students—who do not feel comfortable identifying as either male or female—will be issued within the next few weeks, according to Director of Residential Life Sarah Griesse.

Last fall, Residential Life considered a proposal to benefit transgender students that would eliminate gender as a requirement for selecting roommates and suitemates in the residence halls.

“[The report is] meant to illuminate the issue for us as a college and to determine where we are going from here,” Griesse said. “We are looking at how gender identity is defined and how that plays out in room assignments. I think it’s our desire to raise the issues now, and for the community to learn more about it and to consider what might be done.”

Griesse, who has been working with Queer Union (QU) co-chair Jo Williams ’05 on the report, has not set a timetable for making any policy changes and said she doesn’t plan on making any specific recommendations.

According to Griesse, Residential Life will not make a decision alone. “If changes are made, they will be implemented by Residential Life, but it’s a community issue and needs to be looked at on many levels,” Griesse said. “In many ways the process is as important as the outcome.”

Griesse said that the project is farther ahead than it was last November, when the response to widespread coverage by local and national media outlets brought planning to a standstill.

An article on the possibility of gender-blind housing at Macalester ran in the Nov. 14, 2003 issue of The Mac Weekly, and the story was picked up by a number of radio stations, television stations, wire services and newspapers, including the Associated Press, The Star Tribune and Minnesota Public Radio.

“They really framed it through a heterosexist lens,” Griesse said, noting that the coverage focused primarily on the possibility of men and women living together. “They didn’t look at gender identity. They looked at who would be living with someone else, at men living with women. That’s really not a very informed perspective on the issue.

Griesse said alumni and other people in the community were concerned about the proposed housing policy and that she received e-mails in support and opposition of the policy.

Williams said that as a result of the coverage discussions between Residential Life and QU, the group that has spearheaded the effort, were “completely shut down.”

“It definitely had to cool off for a while, and some people were really upset about this, “ she said.

“Some of the rationale against gender-open is a little weird,” added Williams, who requested that the term “gender-open” be used instead of “gender-blind.” “It’s kind of off the mark. It’s connected to a fear of sexuality in young people and I think this is a way to voice that fear.”

What surprises Williams is that Macalester, which was merely talking about the issue, got so much coverage when other schools, like Wesleyan and Sarah Lawrence, have already implemented housing options for transgender students.

“I don’t know why they grabbed the story with Macalester and ran with it when there are so many other colleges that have gender-open housing,” Williams said.

“This is something that is not brand new,” Griesse said. “Macalester is not the forefront of this issue. There are a lot of schools that have dealt with this but I think there’s a real learning curve, and that’s where we are with this.”

Viewing the outcry last fall largely as a result of people not being accurately informed, both Griesse and Williams are intent on educating the Macalester community on the importance of accommodating the needs of transgender students.

Griesse and Williams began meeting regularly last spring and used the time to research the issue more carefully.

“I think it was important for us to take a step back and outline the options for the college, to consider and do some research and then bring to the table some questions about what this means for us,” Griesse said.

“There are a lot of misconceptions about what gender-open housing looks like, what it means,” Williams said.

Williams says that having gender-open housing options is important precisely because gender is not important. Students picking rooms shouldn’t have to identify their gender, she argues, because for some that choice does not apply.

“Obviously the basis of gender-open housing is that when you go to sign up for housing the next year, that [gender] is not an issue,” Williams said.

Williams said she doesn’t want a housing area set aside just for transgender students.

“What we don’t want is an open-gender area, separating people out and making them exceptional,” Williams said. “This should be more diffuse across campus.”

While she wants people to know about the issue, Williams said that any change probably won’t affect most students.

“It won’t change most people’s daily lives. Most people are going to do their thing in their gender-norm way.”

According to Williams, creating bathroom facilities that are open to people of ambiguous genders—in addition to male and female bathrooms—is an essential element of open-gender housing.

Transgender students need a bathroom space of their own where they don’t feel excluded or unwelcome, she said.

“Gender-open housing means you are eventually going to have all-gender bathrooms,” Williams said, pointing out that most floors only have two bathrooms, one male and one female. “It’s tricky to implement.”

Williams pointed out that unisex bathrooms have already been used successfully on campus in several instances, such as in the Veggie coop and in the Hebrew House. In both cases students chose to have a unisex bathroom.

While she is eager to transform the housing policy, Williams said that any changes will be implemented slowly and in a series of stages.

“They’ll see how it goes and try to broaden it to more areas,” Williams said. “It’s going to depend a lot, a lot, a lot on how it goes. How it’s received is important. If it’s not a big issue, then a lot of people won’t notice or care.”

Griesse and Williams will be available to answer questions on gender-blind housing and related issues during a QU dinner discussion on the fourth floor of Old Main on Oct. 20 at 5 p.m.