Finding and paying for housing is rarely simple for UCLA students who live on the Hill, where dorms are expensive and roommate assignments can cause everyone grief – but access problems are compounded for students who identify as transgender.
Currently, there is one Gender, Sexuality and Society themed community on the Hill, but living there isn’t always as accessible as living in regular dormitories. This year, the themed floor is located on the third floor of De Neve Birch. Many interested students are deterred from applying for the themed floor because of the high cost of living in private bathroom plaza rooms. The cost difference between living in plaza rooms and normal halls can amount up to about $2,420 per year.
Forcing an entire group of students into higher-priced dorms so they can have a comfortable living environment is unfair and cannot continue.
More efforts should be directed toward accommodating students who identify as transgender or genderqueer on the Hill by assigning students to rooms based on their indicated gender identity in the application process and building gender-neutral bathrooms in public facilities. Moreover, UCLA should provide financial aid specifically to increase transgender and genderqueer students’ access to themed floor housing.
Currently, transgender and genderqueer students cannot fully utilize the public facilities on the Hill because because there are no gender-neutral restrooms available anywhere on the Hill. When transgender or genderqueer students want to use public restrooms on the Hill, they must choose between entering the men’s or women’s restroom.
Gender-neutral bathrooms provide a safe space for transgender and genderqueer students with minimized risk of assault and discrimination. The cost of building more bathrooms may be significant, but can be greatly reduced by transforming one of the extra men’s or women’s bathrooms to a gender-neutral one. It could be as simple as changing the gender sign on the door.
The issue of making the themed floor more accessible to transgender and genderqueer students is a challenging one. But one essential step toward providing inclusive housing is to assign students rooms and roommates based on the gender they identify with on their housing application. UCLA has recently allowed students to reflect their identities by adding the gender options of queer, questioning and transgender, but several students have reported not being assigned to rooms or roommates based on these preferences.
With flexible gender options available, housing will also be able to collect meaningful statistics about the needs and size of the transgender and genderqueer communities and implement facilities, such as gender-neutral restrooms or a larger themed community, to cater to their needs. Housing can then always assign students to rooms based on gender preferences, like it does for cisgender students.
Additionally, UCLA should provide financial aid for transgender and genderqueer students to afford living on the themed floor. The number of transgender and genderqueer students living on the Hill is relatively small, so the expense of financing their housing to help them live comfortably on the Hill will not be high. Moreover, UCLA’s health insurance has made changes to accommodate transgender students’ specific medical needs. In light of that, UCLA Housing should be more than able to allocate money to assist these students to make the Hill a more inclusive space for them. With that financial aid available, transgender and genderqueer students would have a lighter financial burden and could sign up for the themed floor where they might feel most comfortable.
The importance of housing for transgender and genderqueer students has not lessened with the establishment of the Gender, Sexuality and Society themed floor and flexible gender options. As a community, we are all responsible for continuing to think about how we can make our campus more inclusive and more comfortable for everyone. It is in fact the implementation of the existing features that proves how diverse and inclusive the UCLA community is and will propel UCLA to continue meeting transgender and genderqueer students’ needs.
I think that the priority for the hill should be to avoid cramming 3 people into 1 dorm room. That would help 2/3 students living on the hill (those in triples), and would probably help the needs of transgender and genderqueer students much better than creating more themed floors. As another note, many people of all categories on the hill do not get housing based on their preferences, and all students should be treated equally in room allocation; it doesn’t make sense to give those who identify as transgender or genderqueer to be given priority.