The Boston College Office of Residential Life (ResLife) cannot commit to prioritizing the future housing options of freshmen living on Newton Campus, according to Addie Weiss, UGBC Senator and MCAS ’27.
“Essentially, [ResLife said], ‘The system is random and there’s not really anything we can do about it,’” Weiss shared at the UGBC Senate Meeting on Tuesday night.
ResLife said prioritizing the housing needs of one group would be unfair to other students who also request specific accommodations, according to Weiss.
“There’s other demographics of students who have come to them in the past asking for priority housing,” Weiss said. “If you give it to one group, then it just kind of muddies the waters on it.”
UGBC Vice President Meghan Heckelman, LSEHD ’25, prompted the Senate to think about ways to better connect students on Newton Campus to main campus.
“I’ve heard that it’s tough when [students living on Newton Campus] have to come back for everything, and it kind of creates this division,” Heckelman said.
Later in the meeting, H Edwards, Queer Leadership Council (QLC) policy coordinator and MCAS ’26, provided updates on the QLC’s recent meetings with ResLife about housing policies for transgender students on campus.
“A big problem that we ran into with these meetings was the written policies and if they exist,” Edwards said.
According to Edwards, ResLife lacks a written policy for trans student housing, creating confusion for incoming students.
“Not having a great policy about [options for trans students] is very confusing because then students don’t really know what they’re getting into when they come here as a trans student,” Edwards said.
Edwards said a written policy would give trans students clarity as they pursue their housing options without forcing them to reveal their gender identity to ResLife.
“The ideal is written policy, first of all, on the ResLife page, so that you don’t have to actually out yourself to admin, that you can look at, where can I be housed?” Edwards said. “That’s the first step.”
Edwards also said developing gender-neutral housing would be the best possible solution, but that it was unlikely.
“Gender-neutral housing is probably way too big a dream for a school like BC,” Edwards said. “But I think talking about the ways that BC can do it in their own BC way is probably gender-based housing or some sort of queer [Living Learning Community].”
