‘ Yet a lot of admin’ were’ really supportive,’ pupil advocate says
Georgetown University, the oldest Catholic higher education institution in the U. S., has certainly received many opposition on college over a shift allowing “gender-inclusive” bedroom possibilities, a student leader told The College Fix.
The new housing option was the result of years of school campaigning and a student body vote that was passed unanimously by the scholar body.
It may help men who claim to be the other sex to share the same classrooms as female students.
The shift will start with first-year individuals for the future fall semester, the Washington, D. C. university announced in June on its website.
According to a blog on the Instagram page of the Georgetown University Student Association, the enclosure program CHARMS, or Campus Housing Roommate Matching System, asks students if they are “in need of female inclusive cover” and if they are “willing to live in an equitable cover place.”
The change is now only effective for freshmen because, according to GUSA, the majority of upperclassmen previously have housing arrangements in place by this point.
However, the student federal stated that the school has” committed to creating a committee to look at female inclusive cover for all students with a] target launch date of Fall 2025 .”
Valli Pendyala, the campaigning director of Georgetown University Pride, told The College Fix that while it is clear that the school is Catholic, like when somebody attends Mass, it also has a friendly group, including its “well-run” LGBTQ Resource Center.
” Overall, there was n’t really a lot of pushback]to the referendum]. Residential Living and their business, as well as a lot of administrative staff, were all very helpful. Kind of the attitude of ‘ why have n’t we done this before?'” Pendyala said in a new phone discussion.
More traditional students in the student body did some backlash, Pendyala told The Fix, but not as much as you might think when you think of a Catholic college.
However, a Catholic lobbying group called TFP Student Action described Georgetown’s choice as” trampling on Catholic morality”.
” God created us male and female and that fact is eternal. So how can Georgetown claim to be Catholic while also supporting “woke policies that accept the lay of gender ideology, foster confusion, and publicly deny the existence of wisdom”? John Ritchie, the chairman, shared a message with The Fix via social media.
” We must desire Georgetown to accept the woke nonsense of transgenderism and return to its traditional, standard, beautiful Christian roots”, Ritchie said.
The Catholic Church teaches that a person and a woman can marry. According to the Vatican, people may change their gender, and “any sex-change treatment, as a rule, risks threatening the special respect the person has received from the moment of notion”.
MORE: Catholic Georgetown to offer’ gender-inclusive’ housing in fall
Previously, Georgetown’s method for assigning housing was to match students who identify as outside the sex binary with roommates on a case-by-case basis.
Pendyala reported to The Fix that Georgetown University Board of Directors members have been campaigning for “gender inclusive” housing for years, but they have never taken any action.
The student body then voted in a referendum in April to give the student body the option of housing.
Pendyala said GUSA leaders, Residence Living, Georgetown’s LGBTQ Resource Center, and students across campus conducted extensive advocacy work ahead of the referendum.
According to Pendyala, “it was a joint campaign” between the GUSA senators that pushed for the passage of this referendum, and also GU Pride and other College Democrats were involved, according to Pendyala in a phone call.
” We were less concerned that people would vote no,” we said. It’s more that in order for this to go to the Board of Directors, we had to get a 20 percent turnout and that’s what we were concerned about”, Pendyala told The Fix.
According an X post from the student government, 31 percent of the student population voted, and 91 percent voted in favor of the change, more than enough to get it in front of the board.
The student government wrote on Instagram on June 4 that GUSA President Jaden Cobb “presented to members of the board of directors in order to implement the gender inclusive housing referendum.” Beginning with the class of 2028, the university made the commitment to establish gender inclusive housing policies, and it also made the commitment to establish a committee to examine gender inclusive housing for all undergraduates with a goal start date of Fall 2025.
This week, The Fix contacted University Secretary Marie Mattson, who chairs the board, via phone. She left a message with a receptionist asking for more information about the board’s decision, including whether it was unanimous. Her office did not respond.
The Fix also reached out to the university’s media team via email and phone several times for feedback on the new housing regulations, but they did not receive a response.
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