Transgender students at Harvard University may not have to jump through hoops for housing accommodations anymore.
Harvard's Committee on House Life issued a proposal last month to make gender-neutral housing a more easily accessible option for students.
The policy, which is primarily aimed toward transgender students, would lead to a housing application in which students could check off their preferences about living with individuals of the opposite sex and could identify themselves as transgender.
Similar policies already exist at Penn, and they are a growing trend among other schools, like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan and Columbia and Wesleyan universities.
Robert Mitchell, a spokesman for Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the administrative body that oversees Harvard College, said the proposal was developed so that "students who have special issues can get their needs satisfied across the board."
While Harvard has provided for the needs of transgender students in the past, the proposal will help formalize the process as a part of a wider trend to help transgender students adjust to campus living, Mitchell said.
"We have also gone through the process of creating gender-neutral bathrooms whenever possible," Mitchell said. "We want to be open and accommodating to all students."
The Dean of Harvard will have to approve the legislation, following the review by the House Masters.
But some students at Harvard are wary of approaching the issue too abruptly.
Harvard freshman Marcelo Cerullo said that, while the proposal is "a very progressive idea, Harvard should at least discuss the issue with students and take a poll to see what they think about gender-neutral housing."
Unlike Penn's, Harvard's policy only provides students with gender-neutral housing who identify as transgender.
Students who wish to apply for gender-neutral suites do not have to reveal why they want gender-neutral housing, said Sue Smith, a spokeswoman for College House and Academic Services.
"We respect students' privacy, and it's none of our business," she said.
The University's own gender-neutral housing accommodations, which allow non-freshman adult students to live with members of the opposite sex, were brought about in 2003 when a gay student requested Housing officials to allow him to live with a heterosexual female student,
At the time, Penn's adoption of gender-neutral housing, which was designed to comply with the University's general Non-discrimination Policy, provoked some controversy among alumni, Bob Schoenberg, director of Penn's LGBT center, said.
"There were people who were aghast at the idea of boys and girls living in the same room because [the policy] reinforced the incorrect assumption that people of the opposite sex living together would engage in sexual activity," he said.
