Interesting.


http://www.excal.on.ca/cms2/index.ph...=4051&Itemid=2


York University will soon be offering gender-neutral residences to students as part of a pilot project intended to serve the transgendered community.

The project, created by the Centre for Student Community and Leadership Development (SC&LD) and the SexGen York Committee, with consultation from the Transgendered, Bisexual, Lesbian and Gay Association at York (TBLGAY), will create a six-bedroom suite in Calumet College. SC&LD and SexGen have been planning the project for several years.

Although it is still in the planning stages, SC&LD is hoping to have the new facility ready for students enrolled in the 2008-09 academic year. The project is one of the first of its kind in Canada.
The creation of the new residence suite is part of an effort to give space to transgendered students whose “physical bodies do not match their gender identity,” explained Prof. Michael Gilbert, chair of the SexGen York Committee.
“As you can imagine, for people like this, there are issues around communal washrooms and showers that are particularly difficult,” Gilbert said.

“One of the prime ideas we have is to be able to create places where people who have these issues can live without worrying about being outed.”

The project is a continuation of a York-wide initiative to expand diversity on campus, which began with the Report on the Status of the Recommendations of the President’s Task Force on Homophobia and Heterosexism – Ten Years After.
“There have been a number of initiatives to make sure that everybody is comfortable [and] up to the standards the Ontario Humans Rights Legislation suggest they should be,” said Lynette Dubois, external coordinator of TBLGAY.

The project’s announcement came on the heels of a residence life restructuring, which included the employment of new full-time Residence Life Coordinators and more training and accountability for residence dons. Last year, the university also removed deliberate gender identification from residence application forms.

Gilbert added that the administration has been very supportive and receptive to any initiative that involves gender diversity. One recent example is the addition of the gender-neutral washrooms at York that opened around campus last year.
“Whenever I’ve gone anywhere [to the administration] about anything, it’s always been, ‘Oh yes, absolutely. Let’s see how we can do it,’” said Gilbert.
With the announcement of the pilot project came questions regarding the appropriate location.
Calumet College is being chosen, in part, for its design. The college residence is separated into suites, as opposed to the common floors that are located within most of the other residence buildings. This allows students to have more privacy and security. Each suite also has its own washroom, which is incredibly important to students who are transitioning.
“The biggest single rate of risk of assault for female to male trans people [occurs in] bathrooms or change rooms,” said Dubois.

Calumet is also smaller and offers more anonymity for the people who prefer it. At this time, the pilot project has many questions that require answers, such as how many students require this kind of housing.
“We’re not certain at this point whether we serve [the community] well or not, but we’re trying to make some additional efforts,” said Chantal Joy, SC&LD assistant director of residence life.
No one is sure whether or not the demand will be overwhelming. Regardless of numbers, the project is going ahead.
“It’s a proactive piece; it’s not a reactive piece,” Joy said.
“So it’s just us [the university] recognizing that there is an increase in the population of transgendered youth, and clearly they’re coming to university today, and we are making undergraduate residences a viable option for them,” she explained.
Gwendolyn Dea Dunsmuir, a fourth-year transgendered psychology student, thinks the project is needed on campus.
“There are trans people [. . .] who go to York [and] I think a lot of them probably aren’t out because there’s no safe place to be out,” she said.
According to Dubois, the university’s policies on gender diversity have been “cutting-edge” and are now actively addressing the real needs of students on campus. The need for programs like gender-neutral housing will only increase as time goes on.
“In the three years I’ve been external coordinator [of TBLGAY], the number of year-one students coming in and identifying openly as trans have gone up each year. This is not just an isolated York phenomenon. This is happening at schools across the nation and we find that more people are coming out, and coming out younger,” Dubois concluded.
“We need to have the services in the universities where they’re coming out to help them.”