Queer Home — a new Theme, Affinity, Program, and Special Interest (TAPSI) housing option for queer students and their allies — will open for the first time in the 2025-2026 academic year, located in Mark Hopkins.
Since its inception in 2021, the TAPSI program has allowed students to live in interest- or identity-specific communities located within existing dorms. Queer Home will join six existing TAPSI communities: the AAPI community, Eban House, the International community, La Casa, Silliams, and the Sustainable Living Community.
“It’s a space to express ourselves more freely and flamboyantly,” said Caroline Yu ’28, who will serve as a Community Coordinator (CC) for Queer Home next year along with Addison Kiewert ’28. “We can decorate our common rooms and our doors with flags, pronouns, and different queer themes.”
Assistant Director for Residential Education Zach Cramer acknowledged that past iterations of Queer TAPSI housing have been proposed but not realized. “We’ve worked really closely with student groups in the past to try and make [a queer] TAPSI something that’s happened, and we’ve always run into … barriers to actually delivering the application,” he said. “I was so excited when we were finally able to get an application there.”
“[The lack of a queer TAPSI] often had to do with students not being comfortable with our inability to keep the location secret from the general campus,” Cramer wrote in a follow-up email to the Record. “Because it’s very common for students to be ‘out’ on campus but not ‘out’ to their parents/guardians, there was concern about parents finding out or targeted harassment.”
Yu and Kiewert were initially concerned about receiving the requisite number of applications for Queer Home to be approved, as TAPSIs must fill at least 90 percent of the available beds in their space.
When receiving 24 applications for a full floor in Mark Hopkins seemed unlikely, Cramer offered the CCs the option to occupy a half floor, which would only require 12 applicants to be approved. Approaching the deadline for TAPSI applications, the Queer TAPSI received significantly more than 12 applications.
“Addison and I were really anxious because we were getting 18, 19 applicants, but that was not enough for the full floor, so we [would have] to reject six to seven people from our applicants, which was a really heavy toll on us,” Yu said.
Queer Home ended up receiving 26 applications, after employing a variety of recruitment tactics. “[Addison] made digital and physical posters and she pasted them around campus and also on group chats,” Yu said. “We also sort of recruited the QSU [Queer Student Union]. The QSU shared on social media and other sort of platforms; they have a larger following and a presence in the community.”
Yu attributed the increase in applications to their advertisement on Daily Messages. “In the beginning, most of our applications were from people we knew personally, but then after we posted on social media more widely and on Daily Messages, people who we didn’t know started applying,” Yu said.
Yu, a member of the QSU board, decided to pursue the role of CC to serve the goals of the QSU and fulfill a personal interest in a queer living space. “My friends and I were watching queer dating shows in our common room,” she said. “And they just joked about [how] I wish we could watch it without looking weird to our fellow residents… And then I thought ‘Okay, why shouldn’t we be able to be present without the fear of judgment?’”
Yu was also encouraged by other board members of the QSU to apply to be a CC. “The QSU wanted a member of the board to be involved and to serve as a liaison between the TAPSI and the RSO [Registered Student Organization],” she said.
While the QSU and Queer Home are two separate entities, there is some overlap between shared missions, goals, and leaders. “There’s no official affiliation between the QSU and the Queer TAPSI,” Yu wrote in a follow-up email to the Record. “Unofficially, however, as the largest queer student group on campus, [QSU] felt it made sense for us to build a relationship and collaborate closely.”
Yu added that Queer Home could serve as a meeting space for the QSU, which doesn’t currently have a consistent location for its meetings. “[Currently] we just borrow space, which is not always certain because we only have the room [at the Davis Center] every two weeks,” Yu said.
The CCs hope to host queer-themed movie nights and common room decorating events in Queer Home, as well as collaborations with other queer RSOs like the QSU, Beyond the Binary, and the Quare Collective for parties and informal events.
While planning the creation of the Queer TAPSI, Cramer and Kiewert discussed whether to include allies in addition to queer students. “I think sort of the issues were … whether we wanted to be a queer-only space or a queer persons and allies space,” Yu said.
“Our current approach is to welcome everyone who applies — queer students and allies — because, legally, we’re not allowed to ask someone’s sexual identity,” she said. “It’s more reasonable for us to assume that everyone who applies has a genuine interest in this living space.”
Cramer agreed that the vast majority of TAPSI applicants value the safe spaces they provide. “With only a couple exceptions, every application is really intentionally thought-out, thinking about the ways in which … the community resonates with them,” he said.
TAPSI applications are reviewed by a TAPSI committee — which includes a representative from the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, a representative from OCL, the first-year area coordinators, and two outgoing senior residential leaders — and the CCs. Students’ names are removed from the applications to remove bias.
Cramer added that he currently sees seven TAPSI communities as the maximum feasible number considering the College’s infrastructure and having to allow enough rooms for the general housing lottery.
“We certainly haven’t identified or have a space for every affinity community yet, but it’s exciting to see more and more sort of coming to the fold,” he said. “I want the residential offerings for all our students to feel like safe places where they can belong and grow in the ways that they want to grow.”
