The program that would allow students of the opposite sex to live together is an empty promise, Student Association members said Monday.

Syracuse University is not taking significant steps toward providing students the opportunity for rooming with members of the opposite sex, assembly members said.

‘I think the general consensus is that this whole thing needs to be reevaluated,’ said Tyrone Shaw, chair of the committee on academic affairs.

SU plans to implement a gender-neutral housing pilot program next fall but will not guarantee that students they will have enough space to accommodate all the requests.

The program will give students the option of living with a member of the opposite sex in two-person suites and South Campus apartments.

The availability of two-person suites on campus is so limited that students who want gender-neutral housing may not be able to get it, assembly members said. Haven Hall is the only residence hall on campus that offers two-person suites with two separate rooms connected by a common room, which are the requirements for a gender-neutral room.

There are only about 10 rooms that fulfill those requirements, said Jon Barnhart, chair of the committee on student engagement.

Students who want gender-neutral housing will not be given priority for living in these rooms, said Neal Casey, SA chief of staff. But the housing policy should guarantee gender-neutral housing to the students who want it, SA members said.

While SA members have spoken with SU officials about student concerns regarding the tentative policy, they have yet to see changes, Casey said.

‘It’s just a policy without anything actually happening and I think it’s unfair to the students they’re marketing it to,’ Shaw said.

After the discussion on gender-neutral housing, assembly member Alec Sim spoke about the renovations to Crouse College. Sim is working with the university to fix problems, such as inadequate facilities and overcrowding. Crouse only has 22 practice rooms, which does not give every student in the music program time or space to practice once a day, Sim said.

Current renovations in Crouse include covering exposed wires and fixing cracks in the building’s walls.

Other business:

Abel Thomas, a senior bioengineering major was elected as SA’s first chair of class alliance

Laura Wolford, a senior mechanical engineering major, and Jonathan Leung, a sophomore international relations major, will serve as class representatives for SA

Eugene Law, a sophomore from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and Alexandra Ziscovici, a sophomore international relations and French major, were elected school representatives

Simin Ding, a sophomore in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, was elected as a university senator

kronayne@syr.edu

Published on October 12, 2009 at 12:00 pm