The National Student Genderblind Campaign lists on its website 54 colleges and universities in the country that offer some form of gender-neutral housing, but Director of Residential Life Steve Waller said the possibility of gender neutral housing at LSU in the near future is not likely.
“There are schools in the north that have been gender-neutral for decades,” Waller said. “I’m not sure that Louisiana is quite ready for that.”
Waller said his department still receives complaints from parents who do no want their children to live in co-ed residence halls that a separated by floors.
“If folks are really open to and aware of what they are being assigned to, I don’t think there would be a big push-back. I think that if someone selected that option and did not fully understand the situation that they were moving into, I could see a significant challenge,” he said.
That would be a significant decision for the University and the system. If presented to the Department of Residential Life, a proposal to offer gender-neutral housing options would need to be approved or denied at the highest levels of the University system, Waller said.
“I would imagine that we would have to go through the same process we went through to make [residence halls] co-ed by floor back in 2001. We had to route a proposal through the chancellor, through the [LSU] System for approval,” Waller said.
Because no individuals or student organizations have contacted ResLife seeking gender-neutral housing options, ResLife has not seen the need to allocate resources to make those options available, Waller said.
Jeremy Baumgartner, mathematics senior, said he believed a gender-neutral option would be taken advantage of by heterosexual couples.
“Not only would it lead to promiscuity in your room with your girlfriend, it would be a distraction as well,” Baumgartner said. “There is a lot of merit to splitting us up.”
Alayna Naylor, English freshman, said she had mixed feelings on the topic.
“People live in apartments with people of the opposite sex off campus,” Naylor said. “People should have freedom to choose. But if a boyfriend and girlfriend lived together it would not be good.”
Naylor said gender-neutral on-campus housing options should be made available to transgender individuals, but not to the masses.
Bruce Parker, the University’s Office of Multicultural Affairs LGBTQ Project Coordinator and Spectrum adviser, said Spectrum has not pursued the option of gender-neutral residence halls at the University. Instead, the organization has only briefly discussed the possibility of a LGBTQ residence hall floor with ResLife officials, Parker said.
 
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Contact Paul Braun at [email protected]