For the first time next fall, undergraduates will be able to live in university-sponsored housing with students of the opposite gender. With so much angst in the housing market, students say they are thrilled at this new option.

During the past two weeks, Resident Life officials have sponsored three forums informing students about mixed-gender housing. Though turnout has ranged from two to 25 participants, those who did attend said they look forward to the opportunity to live with the opposite sex.

“We’re unsatisfied with where we are living now, and we think we’d be happier living together,” said Eric Cole, a sophomore business major who attended the forum.

Cole lives in a suite with seven other men, which he describes as “extremely messy.” He feels that his twin, Nathan, also a sophomore business major, and friends Anne Foreman and another female student who did not attend the forum, would make for better roommates.

“We’re very clean,” Foreman, a junior history and education major, said.

Junior music major Jessica Zweig hopes to live with three of her guy friends next year and said her close friendship overrides the daunting mess that can be living with guys.

“Guys can be kind of messy, but I’m kind of a mess myself,” Zweig said. “As long as we can keep our messes to ourselves, it will be fine.”

At the information sessions, Resident Life officials said the pilot for mixed-gender housing will only include between 30 and 40 people and will take place in University Courtyards and South Campus Commons apartments that have been fully vacated.

“Our hope is that this program is very successful,” said Dennis Passarella George, assistant director of Resident Life for South Campus.

Passarella George’s statement may seem obvious, but the university is only one of a few universities to venture into mixed-gender housing and has only University of California, Berkeley, on the list of peer institutions to conduct the experiment.

Passarella George said even if the program receives a large influx of applicants, the program will not be expanded. He said the Department of Resident Life believes 40 is a good number for the study and wants to ensure that there are still some fully vacated apartments for regular leasing. The pilot is expected to fill between eight and ten apartments, split between Courtyards and Commons.

The pilot program, to run over the 2008-2009 academic year, was passed by Residence Hall Association in the spring and extended last month by RHA to include the 2009-2010 year, with the purpose of examining the feasibility of instituting mixed-gender housing permanently at the university.

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