Undergraduate students will now be able to select gender-inclusive housing options when housing selection begins on March 25.

The new option is a result of St. Joe’s first gender-inclusive housing program, which the Office of Residence Life is implementing for the fall 2019 semester.

That program will permit students who identify as transgender to have roommates in a residence hall of their choosing, according to Jessica Moran-Buckridge, director of Residence Life, who gave a presentation on the proposal at the Feb. 25 University Student Senate (USS) meeting.

Only upper-level students who request gender-inclusive housing are allowed to live in any of the available residence halls. First-year students are restricted to LaFarge Student Residence.

“That is our smallest suite-style location that would still allow students to have that organic first-year experience, but LaFarge still has the smallest number [of students] sharing a restroom,” Moran-Buckridge said during the presentation.

Jordon Constantino ’22, a commuter student who identifies as transgender, said the lack of gender-inclusive housing at St. Joe’s contributed to his decision to commute to school.

Constantino said the new program will not only show support for students who identify as transgender but will provide a needed sense of community for them at St. Joe’s.

“It is nice that [students] can have a suite-style, that they have a space,” Constantino said. “You are not just singled out. You have a community around you who understands you.”

In previous years, it was university policy that the Office of Residence Life worked on a case-by-case basis with students who identified as transgender to place them in housing that matched their gender identity. Students who identified as transgender weren’t allowed to have roommates.

Moran-Buckridge said the new policy aligns with the university’s Jesuit values. As of December 2018, four Jesuit schools—Gonzaga, Fairfield and Georgetown universities and the University of San Francisco—offered gender-inclusive housing options.

“It fits our commitment in Residence Life to provide safe, inclusive, welcoming residential communities to all of our students,” Moran-Buckridge said.

Although first-year students are now allowed to have roommates, both Constantino and Rachel Cox ’19, the residential life chair for USS, said they are still concerned that first-year students who live in gender-inclusive housing will experience social isolation due to there being a single designated suite for the program.

“Other students, who may not know of anything beyond a gender binary, [might question] why those students are living together,” Cox said. “I want to make sure the community at-large is inclusive and that those students get the support they need.”

Residence Life has been working on this proposal for the past five years, according to Cox, who said a meeting with the Transgender Working Group, Residence Life and University President Mark Reed, Ed.D., helped to propel the housing program to be enacted next year.

“At that meeting [with Reed, we were] able to say: ‘We need this, we need to make this a priority and you need to give your unequivocal support,’” Cox said.

Constantino said one of the best ways to support students in gender-inclusive housing is to educate and train Resident Assistants (RAs) to handle difficult situations.

“Ideally, you want an RA who doesn’t conform to the gender binary,” said Constantino, who was selected to be an RA next year. “There are certain situations and issues that we face as a trans student that a [cisgender] person just won’t get. This piece of your identity is difficult no matter what.”

Christopher Heasley, Ph.D., assistant professor of educational leadership and head of the Transgender Working Group, said he hopes that in the future the program can expand beyond the suite-style accommodations for first-year students.

“The future direction is [thinking] about how our campus expands,” Heasley said. “We can accommodate a different kind of student generation with needs that are different than these halls have historically been serving.”

There is no direct reference to the gender-inclusive housing program on the new housing application, but a question prompts students to select the sex assigned to them at birth. Below that question is a statement directing students who selected a sex that does not match their gender identity to call an employee in Residence Life. Moran-Buckridge said the employee who will handle these calls has not yet been determined.

Moran-Buckridge acknowledged that being required to call Residence Life might be intimidating to some students.

“We are going to identify a [specific] person who will be the recipient of those questions and they will shepherd the student through the process,” Moran-Buckridge said.

Requiring students to self-disclose to the office might be frustrating, Moran-Buckridge acknowledged. However, she said it helps to streamline the process for Residence Life.

“Many students don’t follow through with something they say they are interested in,” Moran-Buckridge said. “This process allows the student to be in control of outreach, saying, ‘This is something I want, not just something I am thinking about.’”

Constantino said he worries that requiring students to reach out to Residence Life might pose problems for students.