Wheaton’s Young Hall dormitory will pilot male-only and female-only gendered flooring for residents starting this upcoming fall. The three floors of the lower campus living space will be transformed, with the first floor composed of strictly male residents, while floors two and three will be strictly female residents. This distinction differs from the current housing options of female to nonbinary housing and male to nonbinary housing.
“Residential Life is piloting single-gendered floors in Young Hall for the 2026-2027 academic year in response to student feedback,” said Tim Jordan, Assistant Dean of Residential Life. “Specifically, feedback received in the annual Residential Life survey conducted in November and from prospective students during their consideration of our campus.”
Information on how this change will impact visitors and bathrooms on the gender exclusive floors has not yet been released.
In 2009, Wheaton’s Student Government Association passed a housing policy allowing gender-neutral housing to be implemented across campus. Since then, Wheaton has continued to make efforts towards inclusive housing options that are both diverse and unique to the community. Popular examples include LGBTQ+ and ally floors, substance free opt-ins, and numerous theme houses that are each dedicated to one shared identity or interest.
As reported in The Wheaton Wire at the time of the policy’s establishment, “Eric Eid-Reiner ’11, Vice President for the Alliance, spearheaded the effort and was one of the authors of the proposal. He began thinking about it when talking to Greg Thompson ’10, the former President of the Alliance, about transgender rights and issues on campus.” (See “Gender-neutral housing proposal passed by SGA,” by Elena Malkov ’13, Issue 9, Nov. 11, 2009.)
Although SGA initiated the move towards gender-neutral housing back in 2009, their involvement in the decision for gender exclusive housing this time around was minimal. After informating SGA leadership, the rest of SGA Senate was just informed about the decision earlier this month during a Senate meeting on Tuesday, March 17 by both Jordan and Lyndsey Aguilar Associate Director of Residential Life and Housing Operations.
“We were not involved in the decision,” said an SGA official who wished to remain anonymous, “We were alerted to the fact that the decision was being made about a month and a half ago and shared concerns.”
When presented with Residential Life’s decision, SGA leadership provided their feedback and questions. They spent time meeting with Tim Jordan as well as Dr. Parker.
“We asked for notification to be sent to the school and were told no, but we were alerted as SGA leadership that the decision was happening,” the SGA official told The Wire.
At this point, no formal announcement from Residential Life has been made to the campus community that Young Hall will be split into single gendered floors in the fall semester. On the Housing Portal, however, there were additional options for the gender exclusive housing. Where check boxes were available for the traditional “Female to non-binary” and “Male to non-binary”, the new options for “Female”, and “Male” were there as well.
In contrast, the change to housing options in 2009 was rigorously reviewed and considered by both SGA members, as well as administration and faculty, as cited in the Wire article.
“Faculty and administrators read through the proposal very carefully and considered the advantages and disadvantages of a gender-neutral housing policy, since this was a novelty concept to most of the campus,” the article writes, adding, “According to Eid-Reiner when they brought the document to President Crutcher ‘he was definitely understanding about the reasons why we were bringing it up.’” (See “Gender-neutral housing proposal passed by SGA,” by Elena Malkov ’13, Issue 9, Nov. 11, 2009.)
This time around, SGA involvement was very limited. “They referenced the housing survey. We saw the data but we weren’t allowed to analyze it ourselves,” said the SGA official.
Jordan explained the decision saying, “In keeping with the goal of the College to be a welcoming community for all, it’s important to offer options to appeal to the diverse needs of our student body.”