Staff Editorial | College should recognize need for all-female housing

The debate over whether Strong House should go co-ed brings to the surface competing claims of tradition and change, a common dilemma at historic institutions like Vassar. The residents of Strong House were recently made aware that Residential Life had started to consider giving male students room assignments in Strong as a result of too few incoming female students requesting to live in the single-sex dorm. This possible change raises the question of why the school made the original commitment to preserving an all-female community after the College became coeducational.

Arguably, Strong remains a symbolic space that points to Vassar’s status as a Seven Sisters College, and as the Residential Life Web site states, “Strong is one of the most visible present ties to Vassar’s all-female tradition.”
While traditions at Vassar are deeply important, they must also be re-evaluated when circumstances shift and new practicalities arise. However, in the course of evaluating potential changes due to housing needs, Residential Life must also take into consideration the fact that there does exist a need for all-female housing on this campus.

Because of Vassar’s international reputation, the College’s applicant pool draws students from many different locations, and these students bring with them backgrounds and beliefs that affect their lifestyle preferences. For young women who come from traditional cultures, religions, or families, co-ed living may be incompatible with their upbringing. Vassar ought to display sensitivity to this by providing living accommodations for women with this preference. If the College does not, they run the risk of alienating these prospective students, and losing women who could have been valuable members of the College community.

Additionally, some female students may have had personal experiences that make them uneasy about living with men. Still others may simply feel most comfortable with the support of an all-female community.

The College should continue to provide all-female housing. This would not be unusual or excessively traditional, since Vassar’s peer institutions provide all-female spaces as an option on their campuses, even though many do not designate entire dorms solely for this purpose.
For example, Amherst dorms are all co-ed with some floors designated as single-sex. Bowdoin has co-ed halls and Swarthmore is co-ed by room, but both have single-sex bathrooms. Colgate has some dorms with single-sex wings, while other dorms have mixed floors.

With any movement towards co-ed living in Strong, accommodations should continue to be provided for those students who request all-female housing. If necessary, it would be reasonable to integrate male students into certain floors of Strong while leaving other floors all-female. This would preserve Residential Life’s ability to house both female students who want to live in single-sex housing and those who want a co-ed dorm experience.

During upcoming conversations about making Strong co-ed, the College needs to recognize the continued need for an all-female living space on this campus. More broadly, how we as a community approach this discussion, as well as many other residential debates such as gender-neutral dorms, will be demonstrative of how Vassar can begin to broach the general topic of diversity in housing options. Even if large numbers of students are not currently be requesting to live in Strong, the students or prospective students who do value all-female housing ought to continue to have this option at the College.

The Staff Editorial represents at least a two-thirds majority of the Editorial Board.