A new kind of segregated dorm will soon appear at Haverford College.
“Queer designated housing” will arrive in time for the Fall semester at the Lancaster, Pennsylvania academic institution according to Campus Reform.
Qui Alexander, the director of the Haverford Women’s Center at the Lancaster, Pennsylvania academic institution, was interviewed by the college’s newspaper, The Haverford Clerk. She described “QHouse” as a “refuge (home) for all LGBTQ students by its commitment to support, safety, intersectionality, joy, and interdependence,” suggesting that “many LGBTQ people struggle with the concept of being their whole selves at home.”
QHouse didn’t happen overnight, with proponents of the segregated housing first demanding separate but equal space in 2015. They first wanted to turn an existing college-owned house into segregated housing, but were disappointed to learn that they couldn’t do that without “community-wide conversation and demonstrated support.”
But just being accepted by the college community wasn’t enough for QHouse supporters who demanded the sanction of the local community because the local townsfolk had necessitated segregated housing in the first place, according to Chelsea Richardson, who explained that “if the community realized this was necessary, it wouldn’t be a problem in the first place.”
QHouse advocates insist that segregated housing is necessary for the LGBTQ student community, whose members supposedly don’t feel safe on the campus and claim that it is impossible to get “straight people to understand this lack of safety.”
This lack of safety is described by some as LGBTQ students suffering such grievous “microaggressions” as being “misgendered,” according to an unnamed member of the Haverford Sexuality and Gender Alliance. Another reason cited for segregation is the special needs that LGBTQ students allegedly have and that their quality of life suffers when forced to live with other students.
“Many factors…acutely impact a queer or trans student’s quality of life—such as their neighbors, who they’re sharing a bathroom with, etc.,” explained Chris Bechen.
Haverford has unquestionably acknowledged these supposed special needs with a new policy that “requires all new buildings and major renovations to include single-use gender-neutral restrooms” while considering “converting existing restrooms into gender-neutral restrooms where possible.”
QHouse will open its doors to the rest of the campus on by hosting special events. Costs associated with the establishment of QHouse were not revealed to Campus Reform.
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