More gender-blind rooming options available in fall

Starting in fall 2014, students can choose to room in furnished campus apartments with members of the opposite sex.

These “gender-blind” apartments have been offered in the unfurnished apartments for the last 20 years, originally reserved for students with families.

Next semester, the option will also be offered in Union Street Center, Willkie Residence Center and Collins Living-Learning Center’s Hillcrest Apartments.

Sara Ivey Lucas, assistant director for housing assignments, has worked with student representatives from the IU Residence Halls Association for the past three years to have a proposal for gender-blind housing in furnished apartments approved.

Lucas said gender-blind housing in Union Street Center has been in demand since the building opened five years ago.

“It came to me and my staff from students, not necessarily campus student leaders,” Lucas said.

Lucas said there is no possibility of a student being randomly assigned a roommate of the opposite sex. Students will not be paired with a roommate of the opposite sex unless they make a specific request.

“Our goal is to only provide it to people who specifically ask for it and have set up specific relationship parameters,” Lucas said. “We don’t want anyone to be surprised by it.”

If students do not have enough people to fill their room and are still interested in co-ed living, Lucas suggested using social media to find roommates.

Lucas said these housing options were approved for gender-blind living because they feature single bedrooms and are upperclassmen housing.

“They are environments where we know that students are coming in knowing what a roommate relationship looks like, with a little more experience than a traditional freshman might approach those questions and issues,” Lucas said. “That’s kind of a trend nationally in terms of how campuses are entering into this issue.”

Marianna Eble, the president of RHA in 2011 and 2012, was part of the team of students that identified gender-blind housing as an important issue to students.

“It was the next level of inclusion,” Eble said. “IU prides itself on being a mecca for diversity, and we offer hundreds of different languages and classes. Why not include as many possible options for housing as we can?”

Eble said the biggest problem her team faced was logistics rather than backlash about the morals of a men and women living together.  

She said RHA determined issues such as what the gender ratio would be within the rooms, and whether a leaving roommate would have to be replaced with a member of the same sex.

Eble said she hoped the next step would be the option of alternating male and female rooms in the dorms, instead of a divide between the two sections on co-ed floors.

Residential Programs and Services did a trial run this year in one apartment in Union Street Center.

Richard Milford, a senior British exchange student, lives with three sophomore girls in Beech Hall.

After Milford’s expected roommates “never showed up,” he said he met the three girls at a party and they asked him to move into their four-person apartment.

“The dynamic is very different. I feel much guiltier if I don’t clear up,” Milford said. “To begin with, it was a little awkward to discover boundaries of action and conversation. And for the love of God men, avoid all drama. But other than that it has been an absolute delight so far, and I am strongly in favor of it.”

Though RHA discussed expanding this option and making all RPS housing gender-blind, surveys showed that it was not in demand campus-wide, Lucas said.

“It doesn’t seem to be a highly desirable thing for our incoming freshman,” she said. “Until it becomes something that a significant number of people want, it’s not something that is financially viable.”