The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 45, No. 1 - 30

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growth, development, and sense of belonging?
and (4) What aspects have presented challenges or served to disempower these students?

Students noted that this housing
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a safe space where their identities
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welcomed--an outcome that is
not assured in other environments
they may frequent, such as the
classroom, the student organization,
or their family of origin.

The methodology used for the present
study was critical narrative inquiry (Jørgensen
& Largacha-Martinez, 2014) and is discussed
at length in a previous publication emanating from the overarching study (Nicolazzo,
Marine, & Wagner, 2018). Critical narrative
inquiry encourages the researcher to attend to
what stories can be told by participants, how
we hear those stories, and how both are situated within a socio-political reality that marks
some stories as intelligible and others as nonsensical (Lawler, 2002). As such, critical narrative inquiry was an especially apt methodology
for this study, as it allowed us as researchers to
explore the stories of trans* students in their
own words, which have often been deemed

30

nonsensical and/or nonexistent throughout
postsecondary educational research. The study
included participants from four institutions,
three public and one private, and we assigned
directional pseudonyms for each: NE, MW,
SW, and NW University. These institutions
were geographically diverse, and we sought
to include those that had gender-inclusive
housing in place for at least ﬁve years prior to
the commencement of the study.
We used critical trans politics (CTP) as a
theoretical framework (Spade, 2015). CTP intentionally centers the lives and experiences
of trans* individuals and assumes that ideological and institutional forms of trans* oppression are present within all institutions,
including higher education. This framework
allowed us to center the experience of trans*
students in gender-inclusive housing and document the ways in which policies, practices,
and programs reinforce, resist, or transform
trans* oppression.
Insights gleaned from qualitative interviews with 19 trans* and non-binary participants make up the primary dataset for the
study (see Table 1). We also consulted website
information and transcripts from interviews
with housing staff at each institution to provide
additional insight into students' perceptions.
Students from each of the four institutions
participated in interviews ranging from 45 to
75 minutes. The qualitative interview protocol
is provided (Appendix A). Thematic analysis of
line by line coding (Saldaña, 2012) indicated
that trans* students both appreciated genderinclusive space and experienced speciﬁc challenges related to access, conceptualization,
training, and programming.

THE JOURNAL OF COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY STUDENT HOUSING
The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 45, No. 1

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 45, No. 1
