Killing time

The administration announced yesterday that the gender-neutral housing policy will not be adopted for the upcoming academic year. In the first editorial of the year, the Editorial Board, after learning that members of the administration did not foresee any logistical issues with the implementation of gender neutral housing for the coming year, wrote that this would be the semester in which gender-neutral housing would be finalized. The administration was commended for its “quick movement on this issue—not only because of its political importance, but because it represents a move to make housing options more comfortable for the student body at large.” Yesterday’s announcement was thus both surprising and disheartening, both because of the reverberations that the action—or rather inaction—will have for students, and because of what it signifies regarding administrative timelines.

This initiative had been widely supported both by students—who made their opinions known through the councils in December—and by the administration. The advantages of gender-neutral housing—increased choice and agency for the diverse student body on Columbia’s campus—have already been articulated. That this would be a positive change does not seem to be the main issue. That such is not enough to incite movement on this policy is frustrating in and of itself.

Equally if not more frustrating, however, is the reasoning given by the administration, which said that it wanted and needed to time to comprehensively include any changes to March’s housing lottery, and that the proposed timeline had been “unrealistic.” The original idea was conceived in the spring of 2009. That an announcement had first been expected at the end of January leads one to believe that people had been working on it for at least a semester. A potential pilot program for the 2011-2012 year is currently being examined. This means that it would first be adopted by a few dorms, taking still longer for the issue to reach the student body in its entirety. What students are left with, then, is a proposal that may or may not be adopted before it may or may not move on to affect all Columbia College and SEAS students.

If time is being used as an excuse for inaction, it must also be noted that it is a reason that action is imperative. If a pilot program is adopted for 2011-2012, and if after that the administration decides to fully adopt it, gender-neutral housing will not actually be an option until 2012-2013. Only current first-years will be affected by the change, and then only for one year.

The administration argues that these policies take time. Beyond the fact that time alone is not a logistical issue, there remains the reality that time is one thing that undergraduates don’t have. Columbia students have four years here. Expectations that positive changes be made within a short period of time are based on the fact that that is all students have.