A bill supporting the implementation of gender-neutral housing was passed unanimously by the Residence Halls Association during a meeting Wednesday evening.
Members of the Student Gender Neutral Housing Coalition will present the bill and a report documenting student support of a university policy that supports gender-neutral housing to administrators in the near future.
Gender-neutral housing would allow students to live in the same room with members of the opposite sex in residence halls.
Lee June, vice president for Student Affairs and Services, said he and other administrators are members of a university team that reviews what other institutions are doing and collects information on the student opinion of gender-neutral housing. In the last few years, several universities nationwide have implemented a gender-neutral policy.
“We’re collecting data, and eventually we would bring this up with the president,” he said. “We are simply in the input-gathering state, and we will then look at that and make some suggestions to the president at some point in time.”
Now might be the time for the university to implement a policy allowing gender-neutral housing, said Paul Goldblatt, adviser to the Residence Halls Association and director of Residence Life.
“It may be our time to do this at MSU,” Goldblatt said. “I think maybe it’s time for us to be a leader at Michigan State.”
About 67 percent of students support gender-neutral housing, according to the 2010 Floor Community Survey, which was given to students in residence halls in November. Of 7,600 students who responded to the survey, 5,096 support the alternative-housing option.
About 56 percent, or 4,274 students, said they would consider living in gender-neutral housing, according to the survey.
Such a policy would benefit a variety of students, said Ian Morrison, a Student Gender Neutral Housing Coalition member and political science and sociology senior.
“The old ways of segregating male and female students is a little bit outdated and not as necessary now,” he said.
Morrison said the policy would give students the right to decide whether or not living with a member of the opposite sex.
“(A gender-neutral housing policy) gives power to students,” Morrison said.
“It gives them their own voice.”
The policy would not, however, force opposite-sex housing on students, said Nick Pfost, a social relations and policy senior and the representative who introduced the bill.
“What it would not do is place students in gender-neutral housing without their consent,” Pfost said.
Staff writer Andrew Krietz contributed to this report.
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