UNC Asheville takes stricter stance on housing for transgender students
Georgia Hair decided to attend UNC Asheville because “it was the accessible liberal arts college in North Carolina,” and because of the university’s longstanding reputation of being open and accepting to LGBTQ+ students.
In many ways, that reputation held true last year. She got involved on campus, holding three positions in the university’s Student Government Association. And she made new friends — a key reason behind her April decision to live on campus for a second year.
Hair, who is from Charlotte, didn’t think much more about her housing plans as summer began.
That was until June 11 — when Hair, who is transgender, received an email from the university’s Office of Housing and Residence Life.
Hair had planned to live with a nonbinary friend in a dorm room designated for female students, she told The News & Observer. That was similar to her living arrangement during her first year as a UNCA student, when she lived with one of her best friends since childhood, who is a cisgender woman.
But the June email, viewed by The N&O, said recent updates to policies and procedures within the university’s housing office would “require a change” to Hair’s dorm assignment for the upcoming year.
The email did not mention Hair’s gender identity or make reference to her being transgender, but she learned other transgender students had received similar messages — leading her to believe their identities were a key reason they were contacted.
A call to the housing office confirmed Hair’s suspicions.
“They were requiring us to get, basically, a testimony of our identities,” Hair said.
UNC System policy, which applies to all public universities in the state, prohibits universities from assigning “members of the opposite sex” to the same dorm rooms and suites unless they are siblings, a parent and child, or married.
In a statement to The N&O, UNCA spokesperson Brian Hart wrote that a review of university procedures “identified a gap between evidentiary thresholds” for how a student’s sex was determined in records maintained by different university departments. This summer, per Hart, the university changed its practices within the Office of Housing and Residence Life to align with those of the university registrar — which requires students to submit a form requesting their sex be changed in the university’s records, along with one of a handful of pieces of acceptable documentation supporting that change.
If a transgender student provided such documentation to the registrar, showing that their sex aligned with the other students assigned to their dorm, they were allowed to keep their initial housing assignment.
But students who did not provide the documents were required to change their housing plans — moving rooms or, in Hair’s case, moving off campus.
“I decided that I do not want to disclose my sex to anyone,” Hair said. “That’s my business alone.”
To Hair, the situation represents what she believes is a growing trend of UNC Asheville becoming less welcoming of LQBTQ+ students.
It also represents the latest example of UNC System schools scanning their practices and materials to ensure they are complying with system policies, as well as state and federal laws — something Hart said UNCA does “consistently,” but that has undoubtedly ramped up over the past year-plus as the UNC System and President Donald Trump have both cracked down on diversity, equity and inclusion practices.
Ensuring compliance under Trump
Prior to the housing office emailing select students about their room assignments, there was a sign that changes to university policies might be coming.
On June 9, two days before Hair received the email from the housing office, UNCA general counsel John Dougherty addressed the university’s faculty, staff and students in an email about “policy and legal compliance.”
The message noted that UNC Asheville receives roughly 70% of its funding from the state, while many students receive federal financial aid. Given that UNCA is a public university, Dougherty wrote, those “vital revenue sources are conditioned on our institutional compliance with UNC System policies, North Carolina law, and federal law and regulations.”
Dougherty then referenced a May 19 memo from the U.S. Justice Department that said the federal government, under Trump, intended to use the False Claims Act and seek damages “against those who defraud the United States by taking its money while knowingly violating civil rights laws.”
“Accordingly, a university that accepts federal funds could violate the False Claims Act when it encourages antisemitism, refuses to protect Jewish students, allows men to intrude into women’s bathrooms, or requires women to compete against men in athletic competitions,” the memo stated. “Colleges and universities cannot accept federal funds while discriminating against their students.”
Trump has made civil rights a significant focus in his second term, targeting universities’ funding for what the administration alleges are violations of federal laws such as Title VI, which prohibits discrimination based on race, and Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex.
But the administration has significantly expanded and redefined the longstanding interpretations of those laws. And in many cases, it has held universities to those new standards in identifying past violations, even though the schools were in compliance with the prevailing rules at the time, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported.
In Dougherty’s email, he wrote that officials at UNC Asheville “continuously review our policies and practices to ensure they comply with the law, align with our mission, and clearly inform our community about rights, responsibilities, and expectations.”
He added: “Much of this work accelerates during the summer and we should expect to see earnest and expedient compliance work as we prepare for the year ahead.”
Dougherty’s email did not specify that housing would be impacted, nor detail any other campus practices that might change. But on June 11, when the Office of Housing and Residence Life contacted select students about changes to their housing assignments, the message directly referenced Dougherty’s email and said officials “strongly encourage” students to read it.
The reference to Dougherty’s message illuminated what Hair views as a shift in the university’s enforcement of some policies — and the reasoning behind it.
“The university was willing to do so much when they didn’t have to worry about legal ramifications of any sort,” Hair told The N&O. “The main reason they’re pulling [housing] is because they are afraid to lose public funding. That’s, straight up, what they told us in the email.”
Hart, the university spokesperson, told The N&O in a statement that the university’s student affairs division, which includes housing, “is currently in the process of auditing all of their policies, programs and processes to ensure compliance with UNC System policy and state and federal law.”
LQBTQ+ housing in the UNC System
Last year, Hair lived with her cisgender, female childhood friend. The pair participated in theater growing up and were comfortable living together, Hair said.
“There was no issue there. And that’s what it is with so many people, is that there’s no issue there,” Hair said, referring to transgender and cisgender people living together.
The UNC System’s policy prohibiting opposite-sex roommates from living together is not new, with the Board of Governors — under the chairmanship of Peter Hans, who is now president of the university system — approving it in 2013. That decision came months after the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees voted to allow gender-neutral housing on that campus.
Still, some campuses have continued offering LGBTQ-friendly housing over the past decade-plus, with some offering residential communities in specified dorms. (Some identity-based housing options in the UNC System, such as communities for Black male students and Native American students at NC State University, have ceased in recent months, with officials citing system policy and the Trump administration’s crackdown on DEI.)
At UNC Asheville, Hair recalled that the university’s housing application process allowed students to indicate whether they were LGTBQ+ or if they were comfortable living with students who were. If a student selected they were not comfortable doing so, Hair said, they would not be paired with a LGTBQ+ roommate.
Hair said it was helpful for transgender students to have some choice in whether they lived in a room corresponding to their gender identity or to their sex assigned at birth. For her part, Hair had undergone gender-affirming surgery, “so there was no way I was going to be rooming with men,” she said. But other students at different points in their gender transition might have chosen rooms differently, she noted.
Now, under the university’s revised processes, students must request a change to their legal sex, as listed in university records, and provide additional documentation in order to live in a room corresponding to their gender. Acceptable documentation can include a U.S. passport, state-issued driver’s license, birth certificate or court order reflecting the student’s requested sex, or a university “sex designation form” in which a licensed health care provider must use their “professional opinion” to attest to the student’s gender identity.
Students who received the June 11 email from the university housing office were given until June 19 to schedule a meeting with staff and discuss their options for housing this fall. Otherwise, the email stated, staff would make new arrangements for the student “without your input.”
“This is certainly not our preferred option, and so we hope to connect with you directly,” the email read.
Moving off campus
Hair initially hoped to live off campus for her sophomore year, but decided against it when choosing housing this spring since many of her friends wanted to remain in the university dorms.
With the change in housing procedures, she will live off campus after all. Being asked to prove her identity felt “invasive,” Hair felt, and moving off campus allowed her to retain some of her privacy.
“I don’t want to tell people what genitalia I have,” she said. “That is for me and myself alone.”
In the fall, Hair will live with a friend in an apartment a short distance from campus. Hair said the pair secured one of the last spaces available in the complex, given the relatively short notice — less than two weeks — that they were given after the June 11 email to decide whether to change housing assignments.
Hart told The N&O that any students impacted by the change who chose to break their housing contract and move off campus were allowed to do so without penalty.
“The follow-up process to reach out to every impacted student with potential housing solutions that meet their needs was done in a way to provide as much compassion and care as possible and prevent housing instability and ensure student success for the year ahead, as is our mission with all students,” Hart said.
But for Hair, the change at UNCA impacted her outlook on the university she hoped “would be a lot more welcoming than it ultimately was.” (She acknowledged that her student experience last year was also impacted by Helene, which brought widespread devastation to Western North Carolina and resulted in UNCA closing for weeks before moving to online learning for much of the fall semester.)
While the change in housing procedures is discouraging, though, it also strengthened Hair’s resolve in her identity.
“I think people don’t want to trust trans people. But we know who we are, and we have the final say in who we are,” Hair said. “Something like this is going to upset us, and then we’re going to get right back to fighting, because that’s what we have to do.”
