High school graduates moving away to college for the first time are having the option of co-ed housing more and more frequently at public and private universities with over fifty universities offering co-ed housing today.  For many years co-ed housing has been debated and unheard of, but with the beginning of another school year we are seeing  more schools gravitate towards student's requests for gender neutral housing.

The University of Southern Maine is one of seventeen that began the new transition this fall and says that the establishment of this new housing development is a result of their student’s cry for liberation to live with whoever and however they would like. Many students entering college for the first time tend to struggle with their identity and have pushed their concerns of being limited to their roommate selection to their University’s administrators. 

The more conservative trend that seems to be following this new housing development would be co-ed bathrooms and co-ed suitemates. The University of Chicago has rolled out co-ed bathrooms to all their on-campus resident halls, while Yale has permitted only seniors to live in mixed-gender suites but not mixed-bedrooms. The student government's on both campuses are both very active in seeing that their schools are leaders in individualization, even though Yale was the last of all four Ivy league schools to adopt some sort of gender neutral housing features.

While some students applaud the strives their universities are making towards freedom in choice of their roommates, some parents are worried about the safety and privacy of their children.  The University of Southern Maine combats this worry with the establishment that every student will be paired with the same sex roommate unless there is a written request for a mixed-gender bedroom from both parties.  Most universities agree that giving students the choice to live with whomever they want is providing a safe and comfotable living environment- whether  sex-segregated or gender-neutral housing.