Freedom in Housing
The Issue
One issue on which the Brown ACLU has taken a stand is that of coed
housing. Students at Brown are not allowed to room with members of the
opposite sex. In order to prevent students from selecting or being
assigned opposite-sex roommates, prior to the housing lottery every room
and suite is designated "blue" or "pink." Whatever the
student's lottery
number, a male student cannot live in a pink room, and a female student
cannot live in a blue room.
Our Stance
We believe that the current housing system violates the students' rights
because it discriminates based on gender. Simply because a student is female,
there are certain rooms which are closed to her in the lottery, and vice versa.
The ACLU believes that
all rooms should be open to all students, regardless of gender.
It is also discriminatory to forbid opposite-sex roommates. Not only do
students have rooms closed to them because of their gender, they are also
unable to choose their roommate freely. Each student can only choose his
or her roommate from half the campus population. This is especially
ridiculous in the case of Grad Center suites, which consist of a hall
connecting several single rooms. The suitemates share only the hall and a
bathroom.
There is little difference between a Grad Center suite and a freshman
hallway. In some freshman dorms there are designated male and female
bathrooms, but in others (such as the New Pembroke dorms) the bathrooms are
single units used by both sexes. Yet in a freshman hallway the rooms
alternate male-female, while the rooms in a Grad Center suite must be all
either male or female.
Finally, the ban on coed housing is a heterosexist rule. Presumably the
purpose of this rule is to prevent lovers and potential lovers from rooming
together. This assumes, however, that all couples are male-female, which
is certainly not the case. For these reasons, the ACLU believes that each
student should be able to choose the roommate he or she wants, whether male
or female.
