It is "very likely" that there will be some form of gender-neutral housing at Brandeis next fall, according to Residence Life's Associate Director for Operations and Assignments Jeremy Leiferman.Last March, former Director of Residence Life Rich DeCapua stated that the Department of Residence Life aimed to implement a gender-neutral housing policy, which would allow for mixed-gender rooms after the first two weeks of the fall semester, which would have started this past Monday Sept. 8, the day the housing freeze ended. However, Leiferman said that after the housing freeze, a two-week period at the beginning of the year during which students cannot switch rooms, students will still not be able to switch into mixed-gender rooms.

According to Leiferman, ResLife still needs to look at all aspects of this policy, including floor designations, room designations, bathrooms and the structures of the buildings, before it can draft a policy.

Since Brandeis already allows for mixed-gender suites, the policy's "focus will be on our corridor-style areas, so places like the Village and East, I think, will be the likely targets for implementation," said Leiferman.

ResLife has not yet determined what gender-neutral housing will specifically be like, but it will most likely not be open to first-year students, Leiferman continued.

"Brandeis has a unique mixed interest because there's as much interest in gender-neutral housing as there is in maintaining single-gender housing. In the last few years, we've actually added more single-gender floors at the request of students," said Leiferman, who added that ResLife aims to make students as comfortable as possible with regard to housing.

This year, according to Leiferman, ResLife will work on educating the Brandeis community about gender-neutral housing. "At this point, we are at a place where we need to spend some time doing some education with the community . so that everyone kind of has a really good understanding of what the issues are, what the needs are, why this needs to happen," he said.

According to Student Union President Jason Gray '10, "The Social Justice Committee pushed for it last year, and there's no real opposition to this policy. This semester, I'm on the same page as ResLife in that we both understand the importance of educating the community on any type of policy change."

Gray added, "We're forming the Residence Life University committee within the next week, and one of the things they'll be doing is providing student feedback to ResLife on [gender-neutral housing] and other policies."

Leiferman also said that ResLife will gather student input over the next few months by working with organizations like the GLBTQ alliance Triskelion, TransBrandeis and the Student Union Residence Life Committee, in addition to University administration and Community Advisors. ResLife will also conduct programs and forums with students and staff, he said. These programs will educate students, faculty and staff regarding gender-neutral housing and will gather input from the Brandeis community to help determine how best to implement the policy.

"There's no longer a need to push the idea; the issue is how to best implement the policy and how to best educate the community about its implementation," Gray said.

For now, "if there are students who have concerns that relate to their gender identity and housing, we would be more than happy to have conversations with them and see how we can be helpful to them," Leiferman said. "That's always been the policy," continued.