Finding a Neutral Zone

As winter draws to a close and blocking season approaches, Harvard housing myths are shared over Chickwiches in Annenberg. Football players fear the Quad while legacies assume they will follow their parents to Eliot or Adams. Yet it seems students know more about these myths than actual housing rules. When it comes to coeducational living, the policy seems as ambiguous as its name: “gender neutral housing.”

A heavily publicized information session last week offered free pizza and an explanation of gender neutral housing. The majority of the 15 attendees were affiliated with the Queer Students and Allies (formerly BGLTSA), campus media, and the UC, which co-sponsored the event with the Trans Task Force.

The meeting intended to lend transparency to the two-year-old policy that protects the housing needs of transgender and gender questioning students.

 “Most students have no clue that there’s a gender neutral housing policy,” explains Lisa J. Miracchi ’09, chair of the TTF, a university-wide coalition that recently joined forces with the QSA.

But while the legislation has marked a major victory for transgender rights, it is still challenged by current housing constraints and arguments for a more inclusive policy.

A LONG TIME COMING

The implementation of gender neutral housing was the result of years of campus-wide advocacy. Assistant Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin II, a strong ally of the QSA, was one of many dedicated to spreading trans awareness within the Harvard community over five years ago.

“I realized that even if I was to become really educated about it, there were still these 12 House masters who would benefit from knowing more about what it means to be a transgender student and what transitioning means,” he explains.

The conversations ranged from discussions at QSA and TTF meetings to staff training sessions to collaborations across Harvard’s schools, leading to increased trans awareness, more gender neutral bathrooms, and the inclusion of gender identity protection into the university’s non-discrimination policy in April 2006.

These advances spurred the formation of a committee under the Office of Residential Life to address the viability of gender neutral housing, in
which gender is taken out of the equation to provide a comfortable living situation for transgender students or those who do not identify with either
gender. According to the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition, over 50 colleges implemented gender neutral housing policies as of July 2008.

FORMING A PLAN

Harvard’s unorthodox housing process made policy development particularly tricky. Other colleges, such as Dartmouth and Brown, have designated gender neutral floors or suites across campus that students can lottery into. But Assistant Dean of Residential Life Joshua G. McIntosh, who headed the ORL’s efforts, was intent on preserving Harvard’s signature random house assignment. “One’s house affiliation should not be associated with your gender or your transition from one gender to another,” he explains.

Instead, Harvard’s policy, implemented in the spring of 2007, accommodates students’ needs after their placement in a house. Students can always approach their House masters about specific rooming issues, but McIntosh serves as an added supportive resource.

“Lots of times if you’re just coming out, you’re in a very vulnerable situation,” Miracchi says. “You don’t want to have to explain yourself to everybody, so having one person who’s really well-versed in these issues and knows all the administrators really well is really an asset to the student.”

University policy requires locks on all bedroom doors of mixed-gender suites. In the antiquated river houses, necessary access to bathrooms or fire doors in walk-through suites has often prevented lock installation.

However, McIntosh asserts that every transgender or gender questioning student’s requests have been met. “At least for the moment we have a relatively small population of students who are coming forward and self-identifying, so it makes it relatively easy to navigate within every house given the space constraints,” he says.

McIntosh reports that two gender neutral housing requests were made to his office this fall, and more were made directly to house administrators.

FREEDOM FOR ALL

McIntosh makes clear that the ORL gender neutral policy only guarantees mixed-gender housing to students who identify as transgender or gender questioning. But many more requests for mixed-gender housing are made at the house level by both gay and straight students.

Requests are granted at the discretion of House masters, and getting approval can be difficult. McIntosh cites issues of equity: to satisfy the bedroom lock requirement, co-ed blocking groups could potentially only be housed in desirable senior-status rooms. This bothers some students who want guaranteed coed rooming.

“There is some dissatisfaction at this point with the policy,” said UC President Andrea R. Flores ’10 at the information session. “Gay students aren’t yet where they want to be.”

Quincy resident Kevin J. Davies ’10 had to jump through “bureaucratic hoops” to be able to live with his female blockmates his sophomore year. He finds fault with the current gender neutral housing policy. “I think it’s wrong to assume that you must be questioning your gender in order to prefer living with men or women, or for that preference to be okay only in the case of being transgender,” he says. “[The policy] should definitely be more inclusive.”

A MORE NEUTRAL FUTURE

UC Communications Director Daniel V. Kroop ’10, who serves on the Council’s Modern House Renewal Subcommittee, understands that current house design limits the breadth of the policy. “Right now we’re at a place where the university really wants to be accommodating but it can only do so much and it’s only willing to put its neck out so far,” he says.

House renewal plans may make broader mixed-gender housing a more viable option by eliminating walk-through suites and creating gender neutral bathrooms, steps that Yale University took in its recent renovations.

But as of now, living coeducationally at Harvard remains an exception to the rule. “To just say that we’re going to remove gender from the housing conversation is not a reality given our space,” McIntosh says. “We are not in that place.”