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.”