It’s that time of the year again. No, I’m not talking about the holiday season. I’m talking about the time of the year when Residential Life makes its decision about what type of housing will be offered during the next school year. At about this time last year, Student Life published a staff editorial urging Washington University to adopt mixed-gendered housing. Wash. U. has taken some steps to look into allowing this housing option.
For the past few years, Residential Life has been considering the option and has presented it to the University. Last February, Student Union passed a resolution in support of a mixed-gender housing policy (Feb. 12, 2007, Student Life). For all its consideration, however, Wash. U. has not yet implemented mixed-gender housing as a mainstream housing option available to the student body at large. Once again, Wash. U. has a chance to make the decision to go through with it, and it’s time that this institution does.
The argument for mixed-gender housing is incredibly simple. The housing options that are currently available construct gender as a function of biological sex. It has becoming increasingly accepted that one’s gender is more complex than a simple biology question.
A housing policy that construes gender as biological ignores the needs of people whose gender does not match their sex. Such a housing policy implies that there is something abnormal about people who do not fit that particular pattern. It’s time to make a change in the message we’re sending about what we believe gender to be.
Many people have said the decision to embrace mixed-gender housing is more complicated than making a determination about how the University believes gender is constructed. You hear all kinds of arguments about how boyfriend and girlfriends will live together and cause turmoil. But these arguments again refer to traditional ideas of sexuality. They place more importance on heterosexual couples than homosexual couples and assume there is some difference between the two. Any relationship argument for why men and women should not live together could also be a reason why men shouldn’t live with other men and women shouldn’t live with other women. Additionally, as adults and college students, we should expect that couples would make mature decisions about whether or not to live together and evaluate all the hardships that living with each other could create.
Though I believe the decision to embrace mixed-gendered housing would only require a decision about how the University believes sex and gender are created, I understand that it’s difficult to make changes in a society that clings to its traditional ideas. There are several ways the University can make partial changes that would make the situation far better than it is now. One type of compromise could be allowing freshmen the option of specifying that they would like to live with someone of the same sex, but also allowing them mixed-sex and mixed-gendered options. Because upperclassmen have the ability to choose who they would like to live with, there shouldn’t be the same need for compromise for upperclassmen. But there are a variety of ways the University could arrange its housing that would indicate progress without forcing change on people too quickly.
In the end, really, Wash. U. needs to accept that gender is not completely correlated with sex and change its policies to reflect that. Once we acknowledge that fact, a change in policy seems to be necessary.
Jill is a junior in Arts & Sciences. She can be reached via e-mail [email protected].