Housing Equality at Yale!

Great article in today’s Yale Daily News about last night’s “Sleep-In” protest!

http://yaledailynews.com/articles/view/28109

As the icy wind whipped across campus on Tuesday evening, it promised to be a long, cold night for the students sleeping “in” on the frozen ground.

Despite the below-freezing temperatures — 18 degrees Fahrenheit at midnight, wind chill notwithstanding — over a dozen students gathered outside to sleep in orange and gray tents on Cross Campus in support of gender-neutral housing at Yale. The sleep-in — officially sponsored by Students for Housing Equality at Yale — comes after Yale officials announced Monday that Yale College juniors and seniors would not have gender-neutral housing options on campus for the 2009-’10 academic year.

“The sleep-in is meant to protest the type of metaphorical displacement we, and by we I mean the LBGT community and allies, are faced with by this decision,” Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Cooperative co-coordinator Rachel Schiff ’10 said.

Congrats to the protesters from Students for Housing Equality at Yale!

Head over to Cross Campus any time between now (10pm) and noon tomorrow to protest the Yale administration’s lack of action in creating an acceptable gender-neutral housing policy–

Come experience the first and only gender-neutral housing at Yale– tents on the quad!

if you’re going to be outside at night for any significant period of time you really need to be prepare. It is going to be very cold.

In general, wear loose fitting clothing as an outer layer, since warm air will insulate you. You definitely need:

snowproof boots
at least 1 (if not 2) pairs of thick, wool, NOT COTTON socks
multiple layers of pants:
this can include snow pants, under armor/long underwear, sweatpants
something you can be outside of the tent in, and at least long underwear and/or heavy duty sweatpants to sleep in
multiple layers of shirts:
underarmour/long underwear next to skin is better than cotton. Fleeces, down, extra sweatshirts
Jackets: the warmer the better
HAT:
you will need to sleep in a hat, it needs to be warm, and it needs to cover your ears
gloves, scarves, etc. the warmer, more waterproof, and more plentiful the better
A SLEEPING BAG:
we’re trying to collect gear for people, but please try to round up your own (or extra) outdoor gear.

Also bring: tarps, handwarmers if you have them and extra blankets, sleeping pads, etc. things you think would help

Come make your voices heard!!

http://www.new.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=67021341348

Students for Housing Equality at Yale invite you to our Sleep-In this Tuesday night to protest the University’s failure to provide gender-neutral housing this year. The protest will begin at 10 pm and continue until the following morning on Wednesday. Cross campus will be our base for passing out flyers and educational materials about what gender neutral housing is, why it is important, and what you can do about it.

The Sleep In is part of a larger process of ensuring our voices are heard during the fight for housing equality. The failure of the administration specifically affects the LGBT community, and that discrimination is unacceptable. We look forward to your help and support!
tents and hot drinks will be provided.

Yale includes gender identity and expression in its non-discrimination policy. Housing options should reflect this policy.

In most colleges, bathrooms and floors are already mixed-gender. If colleges are willing to have those mixings, I don’t see a large leap to allowing mixed-gender suites as well

People do not see gender as the primary determining factor in choosing roommates.

Students should be allowed to identify with whatever gender they feel themselves to be, or with no gender at all, in the rooming process.

Many members of the Yale student body feel uncomfortable rooming with members of their same birth-assigned gender, either because they are lesbian/gay/bisexual, or because they do not themselves identify with their birth-assigned gender.

Gender-segregated housing excludes students from the college– and residential college– community.

The nature of Yale’s residential system is especially limiting of the number of people you can room with. Enforced limitations by gender increase the likelihood that students will choose to leave their college community in order to live with the people they want.

Gender segregated housing systems operate under a problematic assumption of universal heterosexuality. For some, being with people of the opposite gender is less potentially sexual than being with people of the same gender.
Selected Peer Institution Policies:

-Stanford: 2007 extensive pilot program for gender-neutral housing
-Princeton: no form of gender-neutral housing
-Yale: no form of gender-neutral housing
-Brown: 2003 creation of gender-neutral options; 2008 expansion
-UPenn: 2004 creation of gender-neutral options
-Harvard: 2007 creation of gender-neutral options
-Dartmouth: 2007

Resolution of the Yale College Council
Topic: Support of Gender Neutral Housing
Author/Advocate: Katrina Landeta
Co-sponsors: Jon Wu, Barrett Williams, Rich Tao, Ryan Russell, Audrey Pak, Jasper Wang, Matt Eisen, and Tomas Rua.
Date Submitted for Vice President: January 16, 2008
Date for Consideration: January 20, 2008

WHEREAS a student should have the privilege to live with individuals with whom they feel the most comfortable, regardless of gender, and

NOTING the 2006 amendment to Yale University’s “Equal Opportunity Statement,” which states, “Yale does not discriminate… on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity or expression,” and

NOTING that “Yale strongly believes that the best housing situations involves an interplay of people with different backgrounds and interests, and it is our experience that students gain much from this interplay,” 2 and

ACKNOWLEDGING the current regulation that “Men and women will not be assigned to the same rooms or suites,” but also

FIRMLY BELIEVING that this wrongfully creates a binary of gender identity and does not necessarily apply to upperclassmen, whose housing is not “assigned” to them, and

COGNIZANT of peer institutions, including Harvard, Columbia, UPenn, Cornell, Brown, and Dartmouth, which offer gender neutral housing to undergraduates, and

STRESSING the fact that undergraduate housing already has gender neutral bathrooms for upperclassmen, and

NOTING that the lack of gender neutral housing serves to force students who feel most comfortable among members of the opposite sex to move off-campus, and

TAKING INTO ACCOUNT the fact that many universities do not allow mixed-gender rooms of one male and one female so as not to encourage romantic combinations, and

ACKNOWLEDGING that most upperclass undergraduates are 18 or older and thus should be free to make mature decisions as adults,

CONFIDENT that this change in housing would not bring further complications to the current housing system,

FIRMLY BELIEVING that to ask an individual his or her sexual orientation on a housing application is a violation of privacy,

Therefore be it resolved that the Yale College Council,
1) Recommend that the University change its current policy to allow for gender-neutral housing.

http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=54857283429&ref=mf

We Support Gender Neutral Housing at Yale

We’ll organize by sending out announcements via the group.