Yesterday I sat through a presentation about gender-neutral housing in last nights RSA meeting. It is something that exists at 27 other campuses in the US but I never thought about it being an option at UMBC. However, I'm glad Residential Life is making an effort to address the 1% "transgender" population at UMBC.
Contrary to popular belief, "transgender" doesn't necessarily refer to someone who cross-dresses or has a different sexual orientation. As defined in the presentation, "transgender" is a general term applied to a variety of individual, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies that diverge from the normative gender role (woman or man) commonly.
Being that it is a pilot project, gender-neutral housing will only be offered in Walker Apartments mainly because it is privatized, which makes it easier to work with them. For now, seven spaces will be available and you must qualify with 39 credits or more. To my understanding, students will be able to apply for gender-neutral housing this spring for the 08-09 year. Although, I'm impressed with the progress Residential Life is making, it concerns me that gender-neutral housing being offered at only Walker may hinder certain students from residing there because of affordability. It doesn't give everyone a fair opportunity to receive gender-neutral housing. However, it is a pilot project and it is important to see if it will be successful, and if so then more spaces would eventually be available.
Also there aren't specifics of how people will be chosen from the various applicants and what the application will look like. So to give your input regarding the application and other ideas, the Reslife re-contracting task force will meet today at 3:30pm in the Reslife small conference room. You can also e-mail Jacqueline Wilson, Assistant Director for Residential Operations at jawilson@umbc.edu with any questions.
Something else that has nothing to do with gender-neutral housing but was discussed at the RSA meeting was an update from the food liaison. We were informed that food services is thinking about replacing the Freshens Smoothie place with a salad bar, and the Rappz place with a sushi bar and other international food options. Even though nothing is certain, I would love to see healthier food options outside the dining hall. With the food contract being revised and food services coming up with more food options, I'm eager to see better food options by next year.
3 comments:
Quite an insightful update; I never knew that RSA was really looking into solving these issues. Yay, I'm glad to hear about the possible opening of a (hopefully good) salad bar. The shushi place sounds good too, as long as the stuff is freshly made...
This is some interesting stuff. I honestly was not aware that there were concerns about providing gender-neutral housing on campus. Even if it does indeed only affect 1% of the campus population, we're looking at approximately 100 students out of 10,000 - a number a bit larger than 7 spaces in WAA could provide.
I'll be interested to see how the pilot program works out. Like you said, Neketa, those 100 people are more than likely distributed across the four years of college, which means some of the students are immediately being excluded thanks to the 39 credits restriction, not to mention any affordability issues.
Would gender neutral housing be specifically for people who identify as transgender? What are the requirements for getting into it? How are they going to prevent, for example, people who want to live with their opposite sexed significant other and then end up breaking up?
Post a Comment