Attempts by the College of William and Mary Student Assembly to allow gender-neutral housing have been met by resistance from the administration. As a result, the SA is taking smaller steps such as streamlining the application process for students with special needs.

The SA’s initial proposal was an effort to initiate gender-neutral housing at the College. It suggested setting aside several Ludwell apartment units for a voluntary program through which students could cohabitate regardless of gender, sexual orientation or relationship status.

The proposal also sought to address married students, who had been provided with special accommodations prior to this year.

SA Secretary of Diversity Initiatives Koji Ukai ’10 initiated the proposal last semester.

“The proposal met strong support from areas such as the Student Assembly senate, who unanimously passed a bill in support of the proposal, the Residence Hall Association and the Center for Student Diversity,” he said.

Despite support from student organizations, the College’s administration was hesitant.

“We also encountered legitimate concerns about both the practicability and political implications of such a significant change in housing policy from the Office of Resident Life and the Office of the President,” Ukai said.

ResLife Director Deb Boykin was one College administrator who voiced concern.

“I want to support what students want,” she said. “But putting men and women in the same room … that’s just something that at this point we’re not going to do.”

After receiving feedback from the administration, as well as from individual students and student organizations, the proposal was revised over winter break to no longer call for mixed-sex rooms. Instead, it now attempts to simplify the process by which the College can meet the requests of students with special needs, such as transgendered students.

“The current housing policy does a tremendous job at personally accommodating students with special needs on a case-by case basis,” Ukai said. “However, the current system only clearly outlines this process for students with disabilities, forcing students with other special housing needs to navigate a difficult process of talking to at least four administrators and faculty [members].”

The new policy would allow the Center for Student Diversity to advocate on the students’ behalves, simplifying the currently lengthy and complicated housing selection process.

Vice President for Student Affairs Ginger Ambler ’88 Ph.D. ’06 says the administration strongly supports this change.

“The first step in the proposal … is one we support wholeheartedly,” Ambler said in a written response to the SA’s proposal. “Moreover, with the Center for Student Diversity now in its first year with a new, expanded mission, there is even greater potential for reaching out to students who may have special housing needs not included in the [Americans with Disabilities Act] list of disabilities.”

The second step in the proposal attempts to improve the living conditions for these students by providing them with the option of a “mixed-sex, on-campus apartment,” in which men and women would still reside in same-sex rooms but would be permitted to occupy the same unit.

According to Ambler, this change has not been as readily accepted by the administration.

“Given the range of housing options now available at William and Mary, the willingness of our staff to work with students individually to meet their needs, and the level of self-determination that our upper-class students already enjoy, both on campus and off, we believe that the College is adequately dealing with housing right now,” Ambler said.

The policy would require a student to identify themselves as a member of the LGBTQ community.
“There’s no possible way to let people not come out [and still take advantage of the bill],” Ukai said.

Ambler did not rule out future changes to the current policy, but does not foresee any occurring in the immediate future.

“We do understand that a few private schools have plans to allow males and females to share living quarters,” she said. “We may be able to learn from their experience. As far as colleges and universities in Virginia are concerned, both public and private, none has so far found that offering gender neutral-housing is what it ought to do.”

Ukai said that the current changes to the proposal do not accomplish as much as the SA originally set out to do.

“[The proposal] will not meet any of the calls made by the Student Assembly senate for greater self-determination for the general student body,” said Ukai.

He also said he believes the proposal takes “small steps” toward the ultimate goal of a gender-neutral housing option.

Lambda Alliance Co-president Cassie Cole ’12 says she supports for a gender-blind housing option.

“I am 100 percent in favor of a gender-blind housing option for two reasons,” Cole said. “First, it is unfair and really unnecessary to force students to room with people of the same sex … It doesn’t serve the needs of the sexual and gender minority students. Second, it violates the idea of self-determination that the administration claims to value so highly.”

The SA plans to submit the final draft of its proposal by the end of this week.

Next month the College of William and Mary will replace its current Mirapoint e-mail system with Gmail.

The new Google Apps Education Edition system will increase mailbox storage space from 50 megabytes to 7.3 gigabytes, offer spam and virus protection and make all accounts ad-free.

The system will also include an array of applications such as Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk and Video.

“The biggest benefit is that Google offers a suite of apps, including e-mail, in an attractive format that students have embraced already with many personal Gmail accounts,” Director of Systems and Support Chris Ward said.

The College stopped deleting e-mail accounts for graduated students several years ago, and as a result the number of accounts grew from 8,000 to the current 15,000.

Ward said one of the downsides to maintaining the current five-year-old system is the cost of keeping e-mail accounts active after graduation.

The College decided to switch to Google primarily because of the strain on the Mirapoint e-mail system, which became an issue of concern around the same time Google and Microsoft started offering free e-mail-hosting services for educational institutions.

The current e-mail server includes students, faculty and staff. Under the new system, students will use Google.

Members of the faculty and staff, however, will use Microsoft Exchange because the administration believes College business e-mails need to stay on campus servers.

“Both companies were able to offer larger e-mail quotas and other features that we couldn’t match, and they were offering it for free,” Ward said.

After a number of other universities began to utilize other e-mail services with positive results, the College formed an evaluation committee to choose the new provider. The committee included four students, three
Information Technology staff members and Chief Information Officer Courtney Carpenter.
Both Microsoft and Google had features tailored to students, but the committee ultimately decided that Google was a better fit.

“Once available, we’ll explain to students how to move any mail in their existing mailbox that they want to the new e-mail,” Ward said. “Students will start using the new e-mail exclusively, and eventually the old mailboxes will be deleted.”

The Student Assembly also supports the switch to Google.

“Given Google’s easy-to-use applications, like video and chat and calendar, and their ability to offer home pages and easy-to-use website templates for campus organizations, it just looked like the way to go,” SA Student Life Committee Chair Betty Jeanne Manning ’12 said.

IT expects to have detailed information regarding the process of switching over available March 1. The switch is planned for March 22. The transition for faculty members will occur at a later date.

A panel including Haiti’s former Minister of Justice René Magloire discussed the future of justice in Haiti at the College of William and Mary’s Marshall-Wythe Law School Monday.

Speaking through a translator, Magloire, who served as Minister of Justice from 2006 to 2008, said that the
earthquake that struck Haiti Jan. 12 severely damaged the rule of law in the country.

“As you’re well aware, the three branches of government have been devastated by the Jan. 12 earthquake,” Magloire said. “In regard to judicial institutes, they have sustained multiple damages.”

The Ministry of Justice was particularly affected. Only 60 of 300 employees have been able to work.

“Most of them didn’t even have clothes to go to work,” Magloire said.

Magloire said restoring judicial foundations would be a key factor in Haiti’s recovery from the destruction caused by the earthquake.

“Two weeks ago, [Haitian] Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive stated it would take up to four to five years to bring the country back to where it was Jan. 12,” Magloire said. “Justice must not be stopped.”

Professor Louis Aucoin of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University agreed with Magloire, saying that Haiti would be thrown into deeper turmoil if the rule of law was not quickly reinstated.

“You can’t neglect justice,” Aucoin said. “Even if it seems like it’s secondary, it isn’t. The criminals will seize this opportunity and crime will rise. That’s why we need to re-establish the judicial system as quickly as possible.”

While restoring legal functions will be important for Haiti’s recovery, according to Magloire, the country’s justice system has not always been an effective or organized institution. He said Haitians have long desired some kind of judicial reform.

“The judicial reform appears to be essential to establish a society based on laws,” he said. “It is especially necessary for the development of state laws so desired by the Haitian people. … Now the question is, ‘how do I establish the state laws in Haiti?’ Before answering these questions, we must take stock.”

The selection and performance of unqualified candidates for judicial positions, like judges, has been criticized by many Haitians. Aucoin said that many “juges de paix” — justices of the peace — in Haiti had massive jurisdictions and wide latitudes to exercise their legal powers.

“There’s been an immediate action on the part of the Minister of Justice to go out and assess,” Aucoin said. “It will definitely professionalize the judiciary in the aftermath of the earthquake.”

Magloire listed several points of possible reform, including strengthening the capacity of judiciary schools,
reforming Haiti’s criminal and penal codes and restructuring the Ministry of Justice itself.

“Implementation of these reforms requires materials and resources that the Haitian state does not possess at all,” Magloire said. “The challenge is huge.”

Aucoin said that any reforms should be extensively planned and Haiti-centered, rather than implemented on the country by foreign organizations.

“The other thing is the need for strategic planning,” Aucoin said. “I think there has been a lot of strategic planning already. A lot of the plans are there.”

While the path to recovery may take time, Magloire said that the Haitian people must not give up hope for judicial reforms and national healing.

“Despite the tragic events, we must continue the epic journey to justice,” Magloire said. “Like the moral of King Christophe, ‘I am reborn from my ashes.’”