LGBT Or Straight, Grinnell Students Share Dorm Rooms, Locker Rooms

Straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or none of the above, Iowa’s Grinnell College students can opt to share dormitory rooms, locker rooms, and even showers with anyone they choose. Grinnell is known for being an extremely progressive institution, despite being locked in the middle of middle America and despite having been founded 155 years ago by pioneer New England Congregationalists.

“This fall, the progressive private liberal arts college on the Iowa prairie added a gender-neutral locker room to its mix of gender-neutral dormitory options,” writes Mike Klein at the Des Moines Register.

“The locker room in the athletic complex is for those using the recreational facilities, physical education students, varsity athletes or spectators of athletic events.

“It’s the next step for Grinnell College, which became Iowa’s only college three years ago to offer an option for males, females or others to share the same dorm room, part of a growing trend nationwide. The University of Iowa and Cornell College are among Iowa colleges also considering the option in coming years, while more than 50 mostly private colleges across the country have been joined recently by a few public universities with gender-neutral housing.

“It’s about an ethos. It’s about creating a safe and welcoming space. It’s not about being able to room with your significant other,” said Lily Cross, a senior who helped persuade Grinnell officials to offer gender-neutral housing.

“The idea was driven by transgender students, those who don’t identify themselves as either male or female, and students transitioning from one gender to the other. Gender-neutral grew from one percent of the school’s on-campus housing in 2008-09 to 18 percent this fall, and officials discontinued asking students to divulge gender or orientation. The rooms include straight males and females living together, although those who self-identify as transgender are given priority, which includes five this fall.”

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“In my first floor meetings, I cover the co-ed notion of female and males being strictly defined. But in gender neutral, that binary is destroyed. There is a spectrum of gender,” said Camila Barrios Camacho, a student adviser of gender-neutral housing.

“Ideally, we would live in a gender-neutral world where your sex wouldn’t define you. We wouldn’t be defined by our physical bodies.

“It would value the essence of a person rather than the physical makeup.”