RPS offers transgender, coed housing opportunities

Each incoming freshman is guaranteed housing at IU. But for some new students, finding the right housing can be more of a challenge.

IU has between five and 10 transgender students on campus. IU is working to renovate the dormitories on campus to make transgender students’ housing situation easier, as well as make housing better for all students, said Sara Ivey Lucas, assistant director for housing assignments.   

“What we’re trying to do within RPS is make sure that there is a space in every neighborhood where students could feel comfortable and could have the amenities that they wanted while having the experience on campus that they would like to have,” Lucas said.

The greatest challenge transgender students face is finding bathrooms to suit their needs, Lucas said.   

For the 2012-13 school year, Collins Living-Learning Center will offer more housing to transgender students because of the bathrooms — if transgender students choose to take these reserved rooms.

Barry Magee, assistant director for diversity education for Residential Programs and Services, said the dorms have undergone renovations to incorporate more private baths partly for this reason. Transgender students may feel uncomfortable using traditional, single-sex, communal bathrooms.    

“We’ve been on a building project for a couple years in reconfiguring all the bathrooms in McNutt and Teter,” Magee said.   

He said Teter Quad renovations are set to finish in summer 2012, and one more section of McNutt Quad needs to be renovated. The traditional dorm bathroom setup no longer fits with modern trends, Magee said.

“That’s just not very easy for people who don’t fit into a gender binary,” Magee said.     
More options for transgender students aren’t the only changes coming to RPS. The Residential Housing Association has pushed to add more coed housing in many of the dorms, and Lucas said she thinks this initiative is likely to succeed.

Coed housing already exists in the on-campus apartments where couples or friend groups of different genders can live together without having to meet any sort of requirements.    

“I do think within the next 10 years it’s very likely that the residence hall environment will offer something similar to what our housing area does,” Lucas said.   
 
This could include coed suites, halls and apartment-style housing, Lucas said. Students would also have the option to select single-gender housing.    

This week, 4,000 students will participate in a survey asking what they want from their residence hall experience to see if a change such as more coed housing is something they would be interested in.   

“We are trying to be responsive to that need and requests we’ve heard from students and to figure out how big a need it actually is,” Lucas said. “We’re responding to the general change in student culture.”