I apologize for my long silence!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the status quo, and why it is so damned difficult to challenge or change it.  This seems to relate to pretty much every type of civil rights struggle I can think of, at least in the American context – the struggle for the vote and so much more that was a part of the African American pursuit of civil rights; the struggle to control their own bodies that was a part of the women’s rights movement; the fight for equal protections and privileges that LGBTQ citizens find themselves engaged in here and abroad…

I’m involved in a campus-wide discussion about how to make sure that our transgender students feel welcome, comfortable, and safe.  A big Rubicon that our campus needs to cross, in my opinion, is that of single-sex residence halls.  More specifically, we require our freshmen students to live on campus in single-sex residences.  That creates a problem for our transgender students, or any other student who does not identify within the strict dichotomy of male/female.  Some of our students who identify as female, for example, feel that the culture of some of the single-sex residence halls is hyper-feminine or hyper-masculine; they, too, would appreciate a gender-neutral housing option.

There are a number of practicalities to take into consideration.  This is not a change that can be made haphazardly.  And there are students who do like the option of single-sex housing.  So I’m trying to find a middle ground solution.  The one that I like would designate as gender neutral or gender inclusive one floor of each building that has, until now, been single-sex.  This gender neutral floor would be open to students who opted in; no one would be forced to live there.  Not everyone agrees that this would be a good solution, and there are many different reasons for these disagreements.

I can’t help but think that the biggest challenge that I (and many others who share these views) face is the power of the status quo.  And of course, the power of the status quo is exactly why it is so important to me that we make a change, even if it is a small one, like setting aside a single floor in each building.

I keep thinking back to my own experience living in the dorms.  (I know they’re residence halls now; when I lived in them, they were dorms!).  On my campus (which did not require freshmen or anyone else to live on campus), there were two large dormitories.  Both were co-ed.  Now, my dad was a fairly conservative guy – and when it came to his daughter, he was VERY conservative.  If there had been an option, he would have pressured me to live in a single-sex dorm.  And the person that I was then probably would not have resisted -- may even have welcomed it.  But it wasn’t an option.  And because it wasn’t an option, neither he nor I gave it a second thought (well, if he did, he didn’t tell me).  I walked away from the experience thinking that it wasn’t a big deal.  I didn’t ever really feel the impact of living in a co-ed building outside, perhaps, of the first week when my roommate and I debated whether we would feel comfortable walking down the hallway in our bathrobes.  (We got over it.) 

Now on the one hand, I could say that the fact that it wasn’t a big deal shows that it doesn’t really matter if we have co-ed housing.  But of course, just because it wasn’t a big deal for me doesn’t mean it wasn’t for others.  And the even larger point, for me, is that it sent me a really important message, as an 18-year old – IT DIDN’T MATTER.  Girls and boys could live in the same general space, and we didn’t have to fall apart.  We didn’t lose those male or female qualities that we chose to embrace and develop in ourselves, and we didn’t become crazy, over-sexed people who couldn’t control ourselves.  That, I think, is a very important message for students that age – at least, if they are today anything like I was then. 

Now, I understand that I can’t expect my experience to be the same that everyone would have – and that’s why I’m fine with keeping the option for single-sex living spaces available.  But I can’t help but think that part of the reason that some people fight so determinedly against the change is because they also understand that it won’t be a big deal.  I think there are many people fighting the option who realize that, in fact, students might enjoy the opportunity, and their parents would find that the people who came home to visit on the holidays weren’t any more alien than they were when they lived there during their high school years.  I can’t help but think that the significant resistance from some is because they understand that the change would very likely be either ignored or even embraced.  So then I can’t help but wonder whose interests, and whose values, are being represented.

Do you remember when President Obama was about to announce that he was withdrawing presidential support for the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” rule?  Do you remember how the media exploded?  For weeks, we were told that African Americans were socially progressive, but religiously conservative.  We were bombarded with questions: Will Obama lose support in the black community if he embraces this change?  Will there be a major outcry against his position?  I certainly remember the uproar – and I remember the silence that followed his announcement.  Some people agreed, some people disagreed, but Obama’s rating as President wasn’t negatively affected.  (If memory serves, it actually went up slightly overall, and remained unchanged among African Americans specifically.)  So why the hysteria?  Did politicians and news reporters really think that there would be an outcry?  Or were they trying to create one in support of their own position or their own ratings?

Why is there such resistance to making a small change to campus housing policies?  I can’t help but think that the reaction would largely mirror that of me and my father to the co-ed dorms I lived in, and the response of black America to Obama’s rejection of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: a general silence that reflects the fact that the morals and well-being of our students and the community are not being affected adversely.  And so I wonder … are those who resist really representing what they believe to be the best interests of all of our students? 

Here's a related article that might be of interest: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/11/01/242366812/germany-offers-third-gender-option-on-birth-certificates?ft=1&f=1001