Beyond coed: a growing number of universities are taking a "gender-blind" approach to higher education.

The college experience is laden with traditions, like fraternity parties and late-night cram sessions. But some colleges and universities are tweaking that experience this fall, especially as it relates to gender, and revolutionizing college life as we've known it.

Few moments in college are as memorable as meeting your first roommate. But freshmen at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., have a new option this year--to live in a dorm hall where roommates are matched without regard to gender. The 12-person gender-blind hall, a section on the first floor of a 210-student dormitory, is likely the first of its kind in the country.

The goal of the gender-blind hall, says dean of student services Michael Whaley, is to create a more comfortable environment for transgendered students. "When you look at breaking away from traditional gender identification and transcending gender, this seemed to make some sense to try," Whaley says.

The new residence hall program comes a few years after Wesleyan and Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pa., decided to allow sophomores, juniors, and seniors to live with any roommate of their choice, regardless of gender. Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., allows mixed-gender living for all students in any housing that is not single-occupancy.

"Room assignment by gender is really beginning to break down altogether," says Robert Schoenberg, director of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, which does not yet offer gender-blind housing. "People are addressing the whole binary gender system that not only ends up applying to the gay man wanting to live with the heterosexual female best friend but also to transgendered people."

Gender-blind housing is changing campus culture in the same way coed housing did in the 1970s, says Myrt Westphal, director of residential life at Swarthmore.

Most of the new gender-blind policies are the result of student-led campaigns to educate faculty, staff, and classmates about how a traditional gender-segregated system can be discriminatory. Students at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, for example, launched the "Restroom Revolution" last year in an effort to get university officials to open at least one gender-blind rest room in every residence hall. Students wrote editorials in the school newspaper, secured endorsements from student government associations, circulated petitions, and posted fliers in rest room stalls that read DO YOU REALIZE YOU'RE IN A SEAT OF PRIVILEGE?

"Trans people and other people who have an alternative gender expression often face harassment when they walk into a bathroom," explains Mitch Boucher, a transgendered graduate student who helped launch the Restroom Revolution. "People feel afraid of possible violence. It's always hanging there over their heads."

In response to the campaign, the University of Massachusetts will have two gender-blind bathrooms in one dorm when students return in the fall. According to a university spokeswoman, efforts to convert more bathrooms into gender-blind facilities have been hampered by state building codes that require a certain number of rest rooms to be specifically designated for males or females.

At Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, students post signs to communicate their comfort levels when sharing gender-blind rest room or shower facilities. "Students have a place oil the outside of the shower that says who is showering, like WOMAN SHOWERING, ANYONE WELCOME; ONLY WOMEN WELCOME, along those lines," explains Keiffer Erdmann, director of campus and residence life.

"Having the [gender-blind] bathrooms demystifies tensions around gender is sues and demystifies the opposite sex," adds Ryan Jones, a coordinator for residential education at the University of California at Santa Cruz, which also has some gender-blind bathrooms. "In the long term, it leads to a greater respect for gender differences and for all the hallmates in the community, regardless of their gender identity."

Even Smith College, the nation's largest liberal arts college for women. has moved toward more gender-neutral language. In April students voted to replace the pronouns "she" and "her" in the student government constitution with "the student." "We do have some transgendered students, so the student government thought that it was a gesture of goodwill to change to change the pronouns," says Ann Shanahan, a school spokeswoman. "It doesn't change the fact that we are a women's college."

Students and officials say they had to counter stereotypes before updating policies. "A lot of people thought, We don't want sex to happen or We don't want unwanted sex to happen," says Gina Zorzi, a Wesleyan senior who pushed for the university's gender-blind hall. "That's really silly. It assumes that everyone is straight."

Many people also assume that gender-blind policies benefit only transgendered students. But Riki Wilchins, executive director of the gender-rights group Gender Public Advocacy Coalition, says they have a much greater effect. "Gender-blind facilities benefit a lot of students," Wilchins says, "not only transgendered students but butch women who are cautioned they are in the wrong dorm or the wrong rest room; effeminate or sometimes just gentle young men who don't want to necessarily be in a macho boys-only dorm culture; and the many students who tread and transcend gender lines every day."

Henneman is a former reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.