Four freshmen students sent a proposal to Residential Life last month asking for gender-neutral housing on the South 40 but were denied the opportunity to proceed in the petition process.

After speaking with Residential Life, the students—Lauren Chase, Elayna Levin, Laken Sylvander and Jordan Victorian—each wrote lengthy letters, acquired 37 signatures on a petition and asked their resident advisors to write letters of support as well. They submitted their proposal on Jan. 30 and received a response on Feb. 1.

Tim Lempfert, director of housing operations, wrote in an email, “While your letters certainly clarify the reasons for wanting to live in a gender neutral suite, they do not constitute a reason for treating your group differently from our other students, and thus circumventing our established process.”

“We looked at that and said, ‘Well, they don’t want to treat us any differently than other students.’ Our response to that is: exactly! We shouldn’t be treated any differently from other students,” Chase said. “We should be able to have the same opportunities as other students, which is that we should not have to defend the reason that we want to live with our specific friends.”

The students looked throughout the Residential Life website for clues about the actual policy and noted that it only stated where gender-neutral housing was available, not where it was not allowed—namely, the South 40. They also noted that one of Residential Life’s mission statements, to “provide a safe, clean, comfortable, secure and supportive community,” was not being upheld in this context.

“My issue with the policy is that it assumes that the most comfortable and secure living situation for someone is with people of the same sex or gender. Even if that’s not the case, even if you vocalize that, even if you try to work with them, there are no accessible options,” Victorian said. “For me, my biggest issue is that there was nothing. They weren’t willing to accommodate us; they weren’t willing to work with us.”

Residential Life, however, is not as resistant to the idea of gender-neutral housing as some may think.

“We’ve been studying and examining the idea of expanding it to the 40. My desire is actually to do that, but we have a process that we have to go through…My hope is that by fall when the housing task force comes together and meets again, we’ll share with them the research and the information and all the considerations,” Justin Carroll, dean of students, said.

Carroll noted that after a sharp increase in the number of students living in mixed-gender housing in 2011 to 72, the number has returned to a more typical 37 for the 2013-14 academic year, but the number has the potential to be much greater because any suite with singles off the South 40 has the potential to be gender-neutral.

He admitted that some practical issues would need to be addressed before the expansion could take place on the South 40. For instance, the software used for room assignments would need to be recoded from its current state of being gender binary. Other issues include costs and room size as the policy currently does not allow for mixed-gender rooms, but single rooms cost more than doubles.

Carroll noted that a survey would likely be sent to students later this semester to consider their opinions on the issue of gender-neutral housing.

Raised awareness of the issue was caused by a Facebook post written by Wolf Smith earlier this week, which was then converted to an article on the Washington University Political Review website. Pride Alliance created a petition for students to sign, which has garnered more than 300 signatures so far.  

“We are really glad that Wolf [Smith] and Pride Alliance have taken an interest in this. Their support means a lot,” Chase said. “We know that they’ve already garnered over 200 signatures and we recognize the importance of the [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] side of the issue, and for us it’s about all students being able to have the option to live with who they want to live with regardless of gender.”

“I think the real shame of the situation is that Residential life advertises itself as having gender-neutral housing but does not have a clause that specifies it as only in certain areas, such as in BLOC housing. The South 40 is the only place where [nearly] every single student will live at some point during their time at Wash. U. Due to that fact, gender-neutral housing should be available wherever students want to live. Wash. U. prides itself on being an inclusive place for [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual] individuals, and by making gender-neutral housing on the 40 a priority, the school would be putting its money where its mouth is, per se,” sophomore Cameron Kinker, one of Chase’s friends, said.

Another friend of the students, freshman Gaelyn Golde, said she definitely felt that the four should have been allowed to live together.

“I honestly feel like who you live with in college should be a personal choice,” she said. “Most students will probably gravitate toward single-sex housing just based on precedent, but I think that precedent could and should change.”

According to Chase, several other surveyed students from the Pride Alliance petition expressed a similar sentiment, stating that all students should be allowed housing that makes them feel more comfortable.

Neither Wolf Smith, president of Pride Alliance, nor Christine Dolan, LGBT coordinator, were available for comment.