OUR VIEW: Co-ed housing is the solution to gender blind concerns
Students across campus have been calling for gender-blind housing. This is meant to give students the opportunity to live with someone with whom they are more compatible.
Instead of gender-segregated housing we should have co-ed and gender-neutral housing.
This would solve many of the potential problems of either having or not having merely gender-neutral housing.
The prospect of gender neutral housing has caused a lot of controversy. It provides fears that gender-neutral students will be isolated into a small corner of campus, possibly making them targets for hate crimes and other acts of abuse or violence.
Co-ed housing would solve this by providing gender-neutral housing, but not segregating them into particular spot. It would spread individual dorms around campus, promoting integration rather than isolation in the OU community.
Were we to make one of the dorm towers co-ed, students would be further removed from the stereotypical bubble of campus life. In the rest of the world boys and girls mingle. Co-ed student housing would allow students to get more real world training while still in college.
The best part of co-ed housing is it would be an option. Those who wish to live in gender-neutral rooms may do so, and those who wish to remain in their gender-segregated hallways may do so as well — but students should have the option.
This would give OU a chance to shine as an example to a largely unprogressive state.
“To be honest with you we live in the state of Oklahoma, our values are not necessarily the same elsewhere,” OU President David Boren said about gender-neutral housing Feb. 9.
Are we really going to allow ourselves and our administration to hold such a mindset when we’re being challenged to expand ours?
The administration needs to at least try co-ed dorms for a year as a test run. If OU, the state’s largest and leading example of progressive thought, can’t make accommodations for all walks of life, then Boren’s previous statements will never change. Our values, like not accepting each other as we really are or not giving every student an equal sense of security, will never change.
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