JUST ROOMMATES: Boston Globe

...Now, some colleges are crossing the final threshold, allowing men and women to share rooms. At the urging of student activists, more than 30 campuses across the country have adopted what colleges call gender-neutral rooming assignments, almost half of them within the past two years.

Once limited to such socially liberal bastions as Hampshire College, Wesleyan University, and Oberlin College, mixed-gender housing has edged into the mainstream, although only a small fraction of students have taken advantage of the new policies so far. Clark and Dartmouth universities introduced mixed-gender rooms last fall, and Brown and Brandeis announced plans last month to follow suit.

The University of Pennsylvania, Skidmore and Ithaca colleges, and Oregon State University also allow roommates of different genders. Students at New York, Harvard, and Stanford universities, among many others, are calling for gender-blind dormitory rooms.

"It's definitely a growing movement on campuses across the country," said Denise Darrigrand, dean of students at Clark, where about 30 students are living in mixed-gender rooms. "It's a new world, and gender has taken on all kinds of new definitions. It's about being more inclusive, and it's about keeping pace with the times." ...

Supporters hail the trend as a key advance for homosexual and transgender students that eliminates a gender divide they see as outdated, particularly for a generation that has grown up with many friends of the opposite sex. Traditional rooming policies, they say, infringe upon students' rights and perpetuate gender segregation. ...

Scores of colleges have established gender-neutral bathrooms and specific housing for gay, lesbian, and the small number of transgender students, and some already allow male and female undergraduates to live together in on-campus suites and apartments. Most maintain single-sex floors as an option for students, however, and for practical and moral reasons have been reluctant to allow male and female students to share a room.

But a range of students are pressing administrators to eliminate gender altogether as a factor in student housing. These include gay students who feel more comfortable living with the opposite sex and transgender students who don't identify as either sex.

It also includes straight students who want the option of choosing to live with members of the opposite sex as friends. Students say that although administrators and parents may perceive gender-blind housing as essentially sanctioning sex, the vast majority of mixed-gender roommates are platonic. Their living situations are about mutual compatibility, not romance, they say.

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