The Office of Residential Life denied Political Queers their first request for affinity housing, but the group plans to resubmit its proposal by the end of the term. Political Queers is the political arm of the Dartmouth Rainbow Alliance.
Dean of the College Lee Pelton is also trying to create an affinity housing advisory committee that will examine proposals like that of Political Queers.
The proposal, which the group submitted on April 5, proposed the creation of affinity housing as early as this fall for gay, lesbian and bisexual students and their supporters.
Dean of the College Lee Pelton said the proposal could not be accepted in its current form.
"There are guidelines established by the College for affinity housing that the proposal did not meet," Pelton said. He said the guidelines say that affinity housing "must have a formal association with an academic department."
BreeAnne Clowdus '97, one of the founders of Political Queers, said the group intends to submit a new proposal by the end of the term that addresses Pelton's concern.
"We are not really changing anything on the proposal," she wrote in an e-mail message. "We are, however, adding a section addressing the lack of an official department to attach our housing to."
To address this issue, Political Queers would form a committee of faculty members from various departments who teach "queer studies" in some capacity in their classrooms, Clowdus wrote.
"This committee would work closely with the students on the floor to plan programming," she added in her message. "Our two academic advisors -- Sam Abel and Annelise Orleck -- would act as liaisons between this committee and the floor."
She wrote that while she knows several faculty who are interested, the group has yet to invite faculty to be on the committee.
"Professor in Women's Studies Michelle Meyers is getting a meeting of the faculty together to discuss the issue and she is going to solicit interested parties there," she wrote.
The group hopes to have a relationship between the committee and the students in which the students would be able to advise the faculty on course material and make queer studies a more structured and legitimate field at the College, she wrote.
At other schools, she added, queer studies is "structured and organized." Clowdus wrote.
"Queer studies is a very new and hot field right now but I'm not sure if there are any colleges excepting [the University of California at] Berkeley and Brown [University], perhaps that have official majors," she said.
She said the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the University of Maine at Orono and Rutgers University have "queer housing."
"As the College moves towards a more interdisciplinary approach to academic inquiry, we feel that Dean Pelton's insistence that there be a departmental attachment in order for affinity housing to be legitimate is a bit dated," Clowdus said.
Dean of Residential Life Mary Turco said it takes time to refine an affinity housing proposal.
"The students have been developing a petition and they have been refining their petition based on discussion with the Dean of the College and myself as well as with members of the faculty," Turco said.
Pelton said he is interested in assembling an advisory committee of faculty and administration who would be affiliated with affinity housing.
"What I'm trying to do is pull together faculty from current affinity programs," Pelton said.
This committee would act to advise Pelton on the numerous petitions proposing future academic affinity housing, he said.
Turco said, "It is too early to know what the formal proposal will be and what kind of advice Lee and I will receive. There is much support from faculty members for the proposal already, though."
