As a fresh­man in col­lege, I remem­ber a par­tic­u­larly tidy male friend of mine say­ing that he was all for co-ed bath­rooms in the dorms. Why? Because, as he explained, then maybe the guys would be cleaner.

I was not con­vinced, but the mem­ory sticks with me as sim­i­lar sto­ries have emerged and the topic also per­tains to the larger issue of gender-neutral cam­pus hous­ing on col­lege cam­puses. My own expe­ri­ence involved liv­ing in co-ed build­ings in which the hall­ways were des­ig­nated by gen­der, but room­mates were same-sex only. This seemed typ­i­cal to me and it worked out fine—while I don’t think I would have minded liv­ing in co-ed hall­ways, I def­i­nitely would not have been okay with co-ed bath­rooms. I already found the shared bath­rooms (for the first three years, typ­i­cally a dozen or so women shar­ing a 4-stall restroom) to get crowded and messy at times, and let’s be hon­est, some­times kind of awk­ward. A co-ed bathroom—especially with the num­ber of stu­dents usu­ally shar­ing in a typ­i­cal dorm—would not be my style, but I under­stand why it’s favored by many stu­dents.

Beyond co-ed bath­rooms, gender-neutral cam­pus hous­ing has become a sig­nif­i­cant issue on many col­lege cam­puses. My own col­lege has addressed it, Syra­cuse Uni­ver­sity offers gender-neutral suites, and Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity recently saw a move­ment to insti­tute a pol­icy—and that’s just a few examples.

After stu­dents at the Barnard Col­lege (which is all women) unsuc­cess­fully tried to gain gender-neutral hous­ing, stu­dents at their affil­i­ate Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity took up the cause last fall. Sarah Weiss, a senior at Colum­bia, reached out to the LGBTQ com­mu­nity on cam­pus to develop a gender-neutral hous­ing pol­icy that would be fea­si­ble for the uni­ver­sity to implement.

“This was about cre­at­ing a safe space for stu­dents who iden­tify with the LGBTQ com­mu­nity, who might not feel com­fort­able either liv­ing with an indi­vid­ual of the same gen­der” or liv­ing within the tra­di­tional male-female binary, Weiss explained.

Although the LGBTQ com­mu­nity led the efforts, Weiss empha­sized that gender-neutral hous­ing is in no way lim­ited in who it benefits—many stu­dents have expressed an inter­est in liv­ing with a room­mate of a dif­fer­ent gen­der regard­less of sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion. It is, as Weiss explains, sim­ply about “cre­at­ing safe liv­ing spaces” for all students.

Stu­dents worked together to pro­pose a work­able plan for gender-neutral hous­ing at Colum­bia and met with a range of uni­ver­sity admin­is­tra­tors, includ­ing the col­lege deans. The deans requested fur­ther details from the stu­dents, which led to the for­ma­tion of a task force that has worked through­out this semes­ter to fur­ther develop the pol­icy plan. One issue was where the pol­icy would be implemented—a sin­gle build­ing? Campus-wide? After much delib­er­a­tion, the stu­dents deter­mined that campus-wide gender-neutral hous­ing would be best because keep­ing the pol­icy to indi­vid­ual floors or build­ings would be “iso­lat­ing,” Weiss explained. The stu­dents are now hope­ful that a pilot pro­gram for gender-neutral cam­pus hous­ing will be imple­mented at Colum­bia for the 2010–2011 aca­d­e­mic year.

In my view, the debate over gender-neutral hous­ing on col­lege cam­puses is sig­nif­i­cant for a cou­ple of rea­sons. First, since the LGBTQ com­mu­nity has dri­ven the debate on many cam­puses, it’s an impor­tant sig­nal of the over­all role played by stu­dents iden­ti­fy­ing as LGBTQ on col­lege cam­puses. How­ever, since gender-neutral hous­ing is widely sup­ported beyond the LGBTQ com­mu­nity, I think that its ris­ing promi­nence speaks to a height­ened involve­ment of uni­ver­sity stu­dents in their schools' and cam­puses' lives. Stu­dents are tak­ing a very active role in exam­in­ing the poli­cies that shape their col­lege experiences—I think that we’re going to see more uni­ver­si­ties look at gender-neutral hous­ing among many other ini­tia­tives that mat­ter to students.