PROVIDENCE

On the matter of gender, Brown University is now completely neutral.

Several years ago, the college created co-ed dorms, then co-ed floors, suites and bathrooms. And on Monday, when the university conducts its housing lottery for the fall, Brown will add co-ed dormitory rooms.

Brown’s newly adopted “gender neutral optional housing policy” takes effect. This makes Brown the first college in the state to offer the option. But a regional and national trailblazer it’s not. Now nine New England colleges and a few dozen across the country permit male and female students to be roommates.

“We are just moving with the pack,” says Richard Bova, Brown’s senior associate dean of residential life.

At Brown, the movement has been discussed and studied by groups of staff and students for at least four years. Ultimately the basis for its acceptance is simple.

“Choice is equivalent to comfort,” says Russell Carey, Brown’s interim vice president for campus life and student services.

Gender-neutral housing is not a euphemism. It’s not a tacit endorsement of premarital cohabitation, school officials say. It’s an accurate assessment of the situation.

“A comfortable living environment is not determined by gender for all students,” Carey says.

Consider students who are gay or transgendered; Brown did. In fact, these students were a primary impetus in implementing the policy.

“The university was committed to finding solutions for students whose needs weren’t being met,” says Kelly Garrett, coordinator of Brown’s LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and queer) Resource Center. “This new option takes down barriers.”

The new option doesn’t condone male and female students who are in an intimate relationship sharing a room. In fact, it discourages it.

“We discourage students of any orientation who are in a relationship from living together,” Carey says. “There are lots of complications and difficulties that can create.”

Brown requires its boarding students to live in campus housing for six semesters, that’s through junior year. This new gender-neutral housing option is available for sophomores, juniors and seniors. Freshman will continue to be assigned same-sex roommates in dormitories of the university’s choosing.

Gender-neutral housing is a new option only for upperclassmen.

“Students want choices, and a broadening of what choice means,” Carey says.

Brown has 380 double rooms available to sophomores, juniors and seniors. One-third of those, in six dormitories around the campus, will be designated for gender-neutral housing, though officials say they’d be surprised if that many students elected the option.

Among students, the new policy has been widely welcomed. The Brown Daily Herald, the student newspaper, endorsed the policy, and hoped it would go further: “The next stop for the gender-neutrality movement is first-year dorms.”

The new policy was unanimously (12-0) approved by the student Residential Council.

“It’s a proposal with a broad base of support,” says Alex Dean, a senior, and the council chairman. “But the LGBTQ community was the most outspoken. They were the ones who felt seriously uncomfortable.”

In the scheme of co-ed undertakings on campus, co-ed dorm rooms, Dean says, aren’t that provocative.

“Mixed-gender bathrooms are more contentious because they affect everyone. A mixed-gender room only affects the people taking the room.”

The Gender Public Advocacy Coalition, a nonprofit human rights organization in Washington, D.C., reports no less than 30 universities that offer gender-neutral housing, the first of which was the University of Iowa in 1996. In New England, nine universities have gender-neutral housing: University of Connecticut and Wesleyan University; Clark University, Hampshire College and Brandeis University; University of Southern Maine; Dartmouth College; Bennington College; and, now, Brown.

“There is a sense of progression,” says James Reed, a junior, and chairman of Brown’s Residential Council’s subcommittee on policy. “If you know anything about Brown students, they are a very progressive and forward-thinking group.”

Brown’s campus life and student services department posts an open letter to students on its Web site that parents of students are free to read. The university says it will not “question the students’ motives for wanting to live together.” And it does encourage students to “discuss their choices with their parents so that their parents can be supportive of their choices.”

“The policy is not going to be supported by everyone across society,” Reed says. “This is really about giving support to students who otherwise wouldn’t have it.”

brourke@projo.com