Consider the array of housing options at Bowdoin: our impeccable first-year residence halls and our comfy Brunswick Apartments; our well-funded houses and our vista-giving Tower rooms. In addition to the range of options we face each year when the lottery looms in the latter half of spring, we are fortunate to have well trained proctors and RAs, friendly full-time residential staff, and a say in how the social houses affect our college experience.
If something is amiss, facilities often promptly responds to service requests, and administrators will at the very least hear you out, if not fix your predicament. It is clear why the Residential Life Web site is able to tote the fact that nearly 95 percent of Bowdoin students live in College housing. Our housing possibilities are nothing short of remarkable. Yet, despite its numerous positive attributes, Bowdoin housing presently has at least one fault: upper-class housing is not gender-neutral. Gender-neutral housing would allow students of different genders to share not only suites, as is currently the case, but bedrooms too. We should give upper-class students the choice to live with those whom they think will enhance their four years here, regardless of whether they have the opportunity to live in a suite.
Gender-neutral housing is an essential element of any college housing system. Bowdoin's principal mission is to improve its students so that they may benefit society; thus, tied to this mission, housing regulations exist to foster an environment in which we may grow in a rapid and healthy manner. Good roommates allow us to flourish by both challenging and supporting us. After our first year, students are in the best position to select who their roommates should be. In order to meaningfully contribute to society, we need to determine who we want to become, and taking responsibility for our own living conditions in college is an essential step in this process.
For these reasons, students moving into upper-class housing should be allowed to choose their roommates, yet Residential Life policy does not really afford students that choice since it only allows them to share a room with someone of the same gender. Preventing a woman from living with a man, for instance, is a potentially significant obstacle to their development. Such students are not able to return to their rooms to rest or work in an optimal environment. While at college, we need to better define ourselves and our surroundings, and gendered housing is an obstacle to this endeavor. Gender-neutral housing, then, is not an isolated or peripheral issue; it goes to the heart of the College's mission to effectively equip its students for life beyond Bowdoin.
Now, any community of Bowdoin's size will contain people who do not harmonize with one another. One of Bowdoin's foundational documents, "Values of a Learning Community," notes this is not necessarily negative, for "much learning and personal growth come through the creative friction created in contact with difference." Indeed, friction can be edifying; too much friction, however, runs counter to these aims. Gendered upper-class housing policies do not lead to constructive friction; they lead to students living in environments that disable, not enable, them to learn. In fact, by preventing students from choosing their roommates, gendered housing deprives our college community of potential "creative friction."
Recognizing these counter productive situations, some Residential Life policies have exception clauses. Last year's Housing Lottery Information document has a section titled "Other Circumstances," which notifies students that they may approach the Director of Residential Life "for special assignment consideration."
But because the clause partly casts the director as someone who is passing judgment on students' motives, it is as disempowering as it is empowering: "The Director of Residential Life may consult with the Director of Health Services, the Director of Accommodations, and the Director of Counseling when necessary, and will review this information to make an appropriate determination regarding your housing request."
Aside from the problems associated with potentially exposing a student's personal motivations for rooming with someone (thus depriving him or her of the privacy that other students enjoy), an administrator could always scuttle your housing appeal. This is not to say that a given petition would not be successful, for Residential Life clearly does want to create an enabling environment. Success is beside the point. The point is that students have to petition in the first place, submitting themselves to an administrator instead of having their right to choose specified in housing policy.
In future articles, I hope to explore many of the potential arguments for and against gender-neutral housing. Some may argue gender-neutral housing will lead to an increase of couples living together; some may believe that it will lead to an increase in violence on campus; and others could claim such policies will lead to promiscuity.
I believe that no such increase in couples living together would take place, that promiscuity is not dependent on gender-neutral housing, and that in fact safety would be increased by fully empowering students to chose their roommates. In addition, I hope to consider arguments about self-determination, LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, and Queer) marginalization, gender binaries, heteronormative thought, and further assumptions about how men and women interact. Also relevant to this discussion is how other universities and colleges across the nation have responded to these arguments; how Bowdoin students' experiences, past and present, relate to this policy; and how some of Bowdoin's foundational documents speak to it.
I invite everyone who would like to argue for or against gender-neutral housing to talk, write and e-mail about it. We should discuss this issue because the next time we enter the lottery, we will either be confronted with an additional choice or we will be deprived of that choice. Again, this is not a peripheral issue. It is about what type of learning community we want Bowdoin College to be.
This piece is part of an ongoing series on gender-neutral housing at Bowdoin. Rory Brinkmann is a member of the Class of 2010.