Gender Inclusive Housing (GIH)

Definition: Gender Inclusive Housing (GIH) is defined as a housing option in which two or more students mutually agree to share a multiple-occupancy bedroom, suite or apartment regardless of students’ birth-assigned sex, legal gender or gender identity.

Updates:

Provided by Eduardo Olivo, Associate Director Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for Residence Education and Housing Services (REHS)

Gender Inclusive Housing – managed by the REHS Housing Assignment Offices as an extension of the work of a campus-wide multi-faceted GIH committee that includes the GSCC, REHS HAO, REHS Residence Education, REHS DEI Unit and Transcend – communication strategies are provided as follows:

  1. Gender Inclusive Housing is clearly articulated in the sign-up process such that students could not “accidentally” assign themselves to it. Students click a specific GIH link, must read through specific GIH information, and then select a bed. This is all designed to ensure those selecting GIH are fully aware of the intent of the space.
  2. Gender Inclusive Housing has a web presence, here: https://liveon.msu.edu/GIH
  3. Staff are trained on GIH such that when they call with any questions we’re able to respond in a thoughtful, identity conscious way.
  4. All GIH planning is done on a team that includes REHS staff, students, and GSCC team members.
  5. REHS staff is in regular communication with student groups about their experiences in GIH and bring these back to the larger planning team to ensure they’re heard and integrated into the process of planning for each year.

(Provided by Chris Stone-Sewalish, Associate Director for Administration REHS)

  • 102 students selected gender inclusive housing. That’s a 7-fold increase from fall 2019. GIH is in Bailey, Hubbard, McDonel, Wonders, Snyder, and Campbell. We added more communities this year to ensure there’s options across campus with all bathroom types. 
  • We did an impact study for sign-up that included an area for satisfaction: we gave students the option to select their identities, then correlated it with satisfaction.
  • We critically reviewed the satisfaction and identity data to set our next steps for improvement. We’ve received student input that we’ve integrated as well into the process for planning. 

Next steps for the GIH team:

  • Integrate student feedback from this year into the GIH process: we got a lot of feedback on aspects of the process and the living experience. 
  • Propose and execute a learning community: this was in the original proposal and we’re now in a place to engage it. 
  • Piloted a new approach to door decorations in spring to ensure they’re consistent with what information Spartans want to share publicly.

Resources

Translate »
Menu Title
Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial