University housing is working to make dorms more comfortable for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer students by approving a new gender-inclusive housing policy.

The policy will begin in the fall and allow for a new living, learning community, Campus Pride, specifically for LGBTQ students.

The policy makes the university become one of a handful of schools that have gender-neutral dorms. According to College Equality Index, 38 other universities have gender-neutral housing, including University of Michigan, Miami University and Oregon State University.

Wendy Weinhold, coordinator of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans*, Queer Resource Center, said the new gender inclusive policy allows students of the LGBTQ community to live among each other in an open environment.

“(This) means students, who are LGBTQ identified or who are allies and are open to living with students of the same sex who are transgender, have the opportunity to do so,” she said.

Weinhold said to be accepted for this housing, students must submit a paragraph to her explaining why they want to be a part of this community. Application process for these dorms has already begun.

“It’s not for boyfriends and girlfriends to live together,” she said. “Instead, it’s for people who are gender variant, who are gender non-conforming and who are maybe cisgender but trans friendly or transgender and want a transgender or cisgender roommate.”

Merriam-Webster defines transgender as ‘people who have a sexual identity that is not clearly male or female.’ Weinhold said cisgender describes a person who identifies with his or her gender and sex assigned at birth.

Senior associate director of housing Tina Horvath, said housing offers 19 different living learning communities on campus.

Horvath said Campus Pride will be in one wing on the 14th floor of Mae Smith Hall, and will begin with 14 available spaces.

Weinhold coordinates Campus Pride and said it is available to any students who want to live in an open and accessible community. These spaces are reserved for LGBTQ members, but if the spaces do not fill, they will be open for allies of the community as well.

“It’s going to be a really great opportunity,” she said. “[The] first of its kind for LGBTQ students to live together which I’m really excited about because it’s going to increase safety, increase community, increase belonging and increase a real sense of membership and place on the SIU campus.”

Christine Wolfershein, vice president of Saluki Rainbow Network, said gender-inclusive dorms are a great idea. Last semester, Wolfershein was living in a four-bedroom Wall & Grand apartment and said it was difficult to live among people who did not share the same interests as her.

“It was stressful, I didn’t have anything in common with who I was living with,” she said. “They weren’t involved in any of the RSO’s I was and we weren’t studying the same thing.”

Wolfershein said she felt she could not be open to her roommates about the things she was involved in.

“It was really hard to come home and when they ask me what I was doing, I wasn’t sure for quite a while if I could tell them,” she said. “I didn’t know how they were going to react.”

Wolfershein said if she were a freshman and knew about the gender-inclusive dorms, she would be a part of them but is happy where she is now living.

SIU is rated a four-and-a-half out of five stars on Campus Pride Index, a website that rates universities on efforts to improve LGBTQ life. The ranking is based on the “continuum of progress for LGBT-Friendly policies, programs, and practices.”

Horvath said along with the new living learning community, Wall & Grand is offering coed living beginning Fall 2014 as well.

Luke Nozicka can be reached at [email protected], on Twitter at @LukeNozicka, or 536-3311 ext. 268.