USF wants transgendered students comfortable, others not so much

At the University of South Florida, parents won’t be able to choose whether or not their child has a roommate of the same sex.  St. Petersburg Times reports, “parents won’t have a say in the decision.”

In an effort to make transgendered students more “comfortable,” the university is launching a pilot program with gender neutral housing where students can choose to bunk with students of the same sex, or the opposite sex, whichever they prefer.  The parents have no choice in the gender of the roommate.

According to USF housing director Dorie Paine, "It's about making our students comfortable.  If someone's not okay with it, that's unfortunate." 

Apparently the school cares more about making transgendered students comfortable than the randomly selected students who have no idea they are being assigned to a roommate in the midst of “transitioning” from one gender to another.

Spokesman Michael Hoad explains:  "We feel passionately about making USF a complete living and learning environment."

The new housing arrangement was triggered by student Taylor McCue who didn’t like his dorm mates.  "They hated me, and I hated them."

Here’s the new housing policy.  (Be sure to check out the all-important final step.)

Here's how it will work at USF

• Starting today, students will have three options on their housing applications: male, female and transitioning.

• If a student checks the transitioning box, housing officials will get in touch and ask the student what kind of housing scenario would be most comfortable.

• Some may prefer to live alone, though that's more costly. Others may have a friend in mind they'd like to room with. And still others may be okay with random roommates.

• If students choose a random roommate, USF would assign them a room based on the gender they provided on admissions materials. For privacy reasons, housing officials would not notify the random roommates of the transgender student's situation without permission.

• If a conflict arises, the school will reassign students to different rooms.

That’s right, the school admits that catering to transgendered students might not work out after all, in which case they will simply reassign roommates.  Wouldn’t it be easier to make that the first option and eliminate the other four steps?  Then everyone, including the transgendered and untransgendered, could be “comfortable.”  And they wouldn't need gender neutral dorms.

At least parents can still choose whether or not to pay for their children to attend USF in the first place.  How "comfortable" would USF be if enrollments dropped?