In mid-August, after a year of planning and a summer of picking and sending out room assignments, the Administration abruptly altered its plans for gender neutral housing. Vice President and Interim Dean of the College Peter Patton claims the option was redesigned because of a “misunderstanding”—he did not realize that gender neutral meant that male and female students could potentially live in the same room, a policy of which he disapproves.
Last year, the University had a gender blind hall where male and female students were living in the same room. Changing the housing policy to include a gender neutral option for all frosh dorms was an issue widely discussed on campus last spring. The New York Times also wrote an article about gender neutral housing at Wesleyan. Despite all this, Patton says he did not realize the implications of the gender neutral proposal passed by the Undergraduate Residential Life Committee. This means that either the Administration is incompetent and failed to understand such an ubiquitous issue on campus, or it is consciously misleading us.
The students who checked the gender neutral option and the committees of students and administrators who worked hard to create the new policy deserve and explanation for why some students were told to switch roommates just before the beginning of the semester. Because the decision was made without student input, the Administration is sending a message that it does not consider this to be an important issue. Last spring, the University appeared committed to taking this progressive step. Patton now says that there are some boundaries we are not ready to cross. Given student support for this step, Patton needs to explain what he means by “we.”
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