Our Center is thrilled to partner with student advocates and Housing and Residence Life to launch a new living learning community (LLC): Lavender LLC. Thematic LLCs at UF allow students to live in designated dorms with others who share common interests. LLCs also provide academic and extracurricular programing related to the theme. Lavender LLC will be organized around themes of gender and sexuality, with emphases on intersectionality, complexities of gender identity, the history of LGBTQ+ movements, and queer theory.
Importantly, Lavender LLC, located in Springs Complex, will serve as the first gender inclusive housing at UF. This housing option is ideal for gender expansive students (e.g., trans, non-binary, gender nonconforming, and intersex people) and for sexual minority students (e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer people), as well as cisgender and heterosexual students with interests in gender and sexuality studies. Unlike traditional housing options, students living in Lavender LLC will not be assigned roommates or suitemates based on their sex assigned at birth, but instead will have the option to select the students they want to room with based on other characteristics. Many other universities in Florida and across the country offer gender inclusive housing, and we are glad UF is taking this step.
As the academic partner to Lavender LLC, our Center will be responsible for providing at least one linked course per year to LLC students. For Fall 2021, Dr. Kendal Broad is teaching IDS 2935, Be a Social Justice Activist, as the linked course. LLC students who wish to take a class together are invited to enroll in the class which will provide an overview of scholarship about social movement organizing, intersectionality, and hashtag activism. The class fulfills general education and UF Quest 2 requirements for undergraduate students. The class also counts toward the Women’s Studies and Theories and Politics of Sexuality major and minor concentrations.
Advocacy for gender inclusive housing at UF was a sustained effort by students in Pride Student Union, and student stakeholders have been involved in every step of the process to launch Lavender LLC. The Lavender LLC planning team received the 2021 Outstanding Inclusive Excellence Initiative Award from UF Multicultural and Diversity Affairs. We are excited to support their efforts and to contribute to creating exciting environments on campus that support students’ personal and academic development. Lavender LLC will open in Summer 2021!