Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, is making one of its student residences gender-inclusive starting this summer.

The Burton’s Pond apartment complex, which is a residence at MUN for upper-year students, will allow male and female students to share residence rooms.

“The students wanted it,” said Brittany Lennox, Burton’s Pond’s representative in the MUN students’ union. “Many people told me that they wanted their home to become gender-inclusive.”

Prior to this, living arrangements at all MUN residences were maleor female-only, an option that will still be available for students who want it.

Lennox says the new living arrangement is an important change for universities. Heterosexual couples and brothers and sisters who want to live together will benefit from the changes, as well as the transgender community.

“It creates a safer place for those folks to live without having to identify their gender, which can be a troublesome act for some folks,” she said.

Lennox says nobody could say why students had to identify their gender when applying for residence when the university conducted a survey.

She says the goal for next year is to make all residences on campus gender-inclusive.

“[MUN’s director of student residences] said it was an inevitable change, that eventually they all would become gender-inclusive,” she said. “With the amount of success that we had this year doing this, I am pretty confident that it [will] happen next year.”

Living arrangements at Fanshawe are all male- or female-only.

“It tends to be the traditional approach to placing students,” said Brianna Sadler, one of Fanshawe’s residence life managers. “The concept of placing students in co-ed or gender-neutral suites is very new.”

Sadler says while transgender people have been living in residence at Fanshawe, the college has not yet explored the idea of gender- inclusive residences because there hasn’t been a demand for it.

Students who wish to live in residence with someone of a different gender are welcomed to contact Fanshawe Residence, she said.

“It’s really great to see the whole Memorial University community working to create a safe place for diversity and respect folks no matter what their gender or what their sexuality is,” Lennox said. “It’s just becoming a safe place for everybody.”

“Hopefully this can create positive change on other campuses as well.”