“Cura Personalis” Leads Georgetown University to Embrace Gender-Inclusive Housing

Liam Emery Moynihan

Today’s post is from guest contributor Liam Emery Moynihan (they/them), a senior at Georgetown University where they study culture and politics and have been an advocate for LGBTQIA+ inclusion and equity. They recently worked alongside their peers to organize a student movement for gender-inclusive housing, which culminated in substantive changes to university housing processes. They are originally from Bangor, Maine, and currently live in Washington, D.C.

The tradition of cura personalis — “care for the whole person” — is the heart of Georgetown University’s guiding Jesuit doctrine, but, as a nonbinary student struggling to access affirming, inclusive housing, I did not always feel that this care extended to me. But, over the past year, I have felt unconditional love from my peers as we have advocated together for our university to embrace gender-diverse identities and experiences, and, this fall, we have begun to see genuine growth.

Galvanized by the compassion and leadership of its students, Georgetown has come to recognize how profoundly its housing policies impact nonbinary, gender nonconforming, and transgender students’ lives. The university now has committed to introducing gender-inclusive housing for our current first-year class, with hopes to expand its policies to the entire undergraduate student body.

I have come to believe that it is because of Georgetown’s commitment to cura personalis — not despite its Catholic identity — that the university is growing to truly embrace and celebrate our LGBTQIA+ campus community.

My passion for gender-inclusive housing and LGBTQIA+ advocacy is rooted in my personal struggles. In the latter half of my sophomore year, I was deeply anxious about my housing for the following semester. I expected to be assigned to an on-campus, four-person apartment with three strangers, and I had no way of knowing whether my roommates would affirm or invalidate my nonbinary gender identity. To make matters worse, I could register in the housing system only as a man or woman. I would live in a gendered apartment according to my selection, institutionally erasing my nonbinary gender identity. 

Only after a chain of taxing emails and meetings did the Office of Residential Living offer me one further option: a single-person studio apartment. To me, this didn’t feel like a choice. I could accept the erasure of selecting a binary gender identity and roll the dice, hoping to be matched with affirming roommates, or I could guarantee myself a safe and non-gendered, single-occupancy room. I chose the single, accepting the higher financial cost of the room and missing the chance to enjoy my next semester bonding with new roommates.

Not all nonbinary and gender nonconforming students have had even this limited choice of a single room. There are relatively few on-campus, single-occupancy rooms, and the available rooms are often more expensive. So, many nonbinary and gender nonconforming students have been forced to live according to a false binary in gendered spaces — and simply hope for gender-affirming roommates.

Georgetown’s evolving gender-inclusive housing policies, however, promise nonbinary, gender nonconforming, and transgender students a home where we can be ourselves, experiencing the normal joys and growing pains of college alongside our cisgender peers. By asking students on the Living Preference Questionnaire if they are affirming and supportive of LGBTQIA+ identities, Georgetown ensures that students are placed in safe, comfortable roommate arrangements — rather than left wondering whether a roommate will invalidate their sexuality or gender.

As the university continues forward, gender-inclusive living arrangements will affirm students’ nonconformity to binary gender identities and norms, recognizing the dignity and wholeness of gender-diverse identities — just as our core value cura personalis invites us to do.

The recent changes in Georgetown’s policies are not sudden. LGBTQIA+ students and allies at Georgetown have been organizing around establishing gender-inclusive housing for over a decade, and Georgetown has made incremental improvements over time. However, in the fall semester of 2023, recognizing growing support for LGBTQIA+ inclusion across the university, we began a focused and student-led movement to push for tangible, substantive change.

We organized meetings with individuals and organizations all across campus, wrote and shared proposals for inclusive housing policies, and hosted round-table discussions alongside administrators and campus ministry. Our advocacy was received with grace and compassion. But, as the academic year began to approach its end, we did not feel that our calls for change had been conclusively answered. Ultimately, we drafted a student referendum calling on Georgetown to implement comprehensive gender-inclusive housing. We did not frame the referendum as a demand but instead as a demonstration of the student body’s unity in our care for our LGBTQIA+ community.

Support for the gender-inclusive housing referendum was overwhelmingly positive. Over 2,000 students voted, and 91.2% of students approved the measure. These numbers represented my peers’ near-unanimous affirmation of my identity and empathy for my struggles. I felt more supported in my identity than ever before at Georgetown. Over the past months, especially after Georgetown announced its new commitments to gender-inclusive housing, I have seen my community’s cautious but renewed joy and celebration of the university’s future.

While we, as LGBTQIA+ advocates, must continue in dialogue to ensure that our voices are heard and needs are met, we also can finally take time to rest, trusting that our university truly recognizes and respects the dignity of our diversity.

Georgetown is changing — growing — to live up to our Ignatian call of cura personalis, bravely guided by students’ immense compassion for each other and the generations who will follow us. I look forward to Georgetown’s future, and I hope that our university’s Catholic peer institutions may also answer the call to affirm the wholeness and dignity of their LGBTQIA+ students.

—Liam Emery Moynihan (they/them), September 25, 2024