At the University of Kansas, they call it “gender inclusive housing” but its effect is to shunt KU’s “transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming” into segregated wings of student dorms.
A year go, KU officially designated a full wing of Lewis Hall the “Gender Inclusive Housing (GIH) Community” and is looking to expand. The community caters especially to the “Q” faction of the LGBTQ coalition. Apparently, the “Q” can stand for “questioning” or “queer,” but since “queer” is something of a slur, the “questioning” rubric would seem more appropriate at KU.
Specifically, the GIH community welcomes those who are “in the process of discovering their gender identity” or who prefer not to identify with any gender. Students in GIH are assigned roommates “regardless of sex, gender identity, gender expression or sexual orientation.” Ever accommodating, KU also allows students to live in a single sex dorm “congruent” with their “gender identities” rather than their legal sex or DNA.
To dwell within the GIH community, students must sign a contract. Among its more interesting clauses is this: “If I exhibit behavior that is contrary to the spirit of this agreement, I may be relocated to a different housing assignment on campus.” One can only imagine what “contrary” behavior looks like in this world.
The other clauses deal with privacy and secrecy, to wit, “I understand that my roommates and others in this community may not wish for others to know about their participation in gender-inclusive housing, and that I am expected to maintain the privacy of those in this community.”
All of this, of course, requires a great deal of bureaucratic oversight. Whereas dorms in the past might have had an “RA,” and sororities and fraternities a “house mother,” the GIH community is overseen by an “interim director for the Center for Sexuality & Gender Diversity,” which comes with a considerably higher price tag.
