A liberal-arts school founded by a church is believed to be the first American college to provide special housing for transgender students.
Freshman students this fall at Wesleyan University in Connecticut will have the option of living in a new “gender-blind” facility – one floor of a dorm accommodating up to 12 students, the Hartford Courant reported.
The living space is reserved for students who don’t want to be categorized as one gender or another, the university said. The school’s new policy says the students in the living area “will be assigned a roommate without the consideration of gender.”
Selina Ellis, a student who campaigned for the new housing, was surprised by the administration’s response, the Courant said.
“We figured that this would be too much for them to handle, but they were really eager to understand and meet the needs of transgender students on campus,” she said.
Mike Whaley, dean of student services, estimates the school has a dozen or more transgender students on campus.
Some students who are “transitioning” gender-wise have been placed with roommates that put them in “uncomfortable situations,” he said, according to the Hartford daily.
Wesleyan, founded in 1831 by Methodist Church leaders, is a famously liberal school, with offerings such as a homosexual prom and a course on pornography.
The school is named for John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, but became officially independent of the Methodist Church in 1937.
The campus newspaper, the Wesleyan Argus, reported last year “the bathrooms in the Campus Center basement were gender neutralized” in honor of “National Transgender Remembrance Day.”
The paper said on that day “both bathroom doors were completely covered with fliers depicting symbols for various genders in order to appear non-gender specific.”
The campus website says the school’s American Studies department offers a “Queer Studies concentration within the American Studies major.”
The website says, “Each semester, a variety of courses related to Queer Studies is offered by various departments: English, Sociology, Women’s Studies, Religion, Asian Languages and Literature, and American Studies. Some of these classes include Queer Theory; Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual People in Society; Queering the American State: Politics and Sex After 1968; Ancient Sexualities; Queer Kids; and Nationalism and the Politics of Gender and Sexuality.”
