Boston University Approves Gender Neutral Campus Housing Following Vote From Student Body

In addition to choosing a major and classes, students at Boston University now have the option to choose their roommate(s)—without regard to their gender.

On Tuesday, Boston University President Robert A. Brown announced his approval of a gender neutral housing program that will grant most students the option to choose to live with the opposite sex as early as the upcoming fall semester.

"This is about empowering students to make choices about how they live and giving them a greater measure of control over their college experience," Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore said in the statement, according to Boston.com. "This is really about your choice of who you live with. Your preference about gender and how you perceive it is really not our concern."

As in the majority of college campus across the nation, students were originally only allowed to pick roommates who were of the same sex. Now, however, two or more students will be permitted to share a bedroom, a suite, or an apartment in certain buildings across campus, regardless of their gender, reads the statement.

Other colleges that implement the gender neutral program in the Boston-area include Northeastern University, MIT, Harvard University and Tufts University. All together, there are 90 colleges throughout the country that also follow the practice.

In a 2012 survey conducted by the BU student government, nearly 2,000 students supported gender neutral housing, and roughly 500 said they would choose the living option themselves.

"We, as members of the BU community, believe that this is a mature living situation and that the vast majority of students who choose to live under it will rise to the occasion ... with a great deal of respect for the program and for its rules," wrote student senators Caitlin Seele, Natalie Siddique and David Anthony Whatley in their initial proposal, according to Bostinno. "No one should feel uncomfortable in university housing. No student should feel unwelcomed while living on campus. And, above all, no student should ever feel unsafe in their own home here at Boston University."