UL launches housing for LGBT+ students

THE University of Limerick has launched LGBT+ housing to allow students to easily adapt to university life.

Those applying for accommodation for this September’s uptake will be able to opt for accommodation only for lesbian, gay and trangender students.

College accommodation bosses say the move will ensure there is ‘a safe, secure living environment for all residents’.

The flats themselves will be within the wider halls of residence on campus – and the college has already revealed it has received more than 200 applications from students across 30 countries.

There are 2,800 student beds on campus. The university has not set a specific number of beds aside, but will make an allocation ‘based on demand’.

UL becomes the first college in Ireland to provide the scheme, and it follows in the footsteps of the University of Sheffield in south Yorkshire, England.

Dr Amanda Haynes, the co-director of UL’s hate and hostility research group, said: ‘UL will be enriched by the presence on campus of a resource that encourages all of our LGBT students and allies to be active, critical, political, disruptive and constructive contributors to our collective campus life.’

She also said rainbow housing was not about ‘self-segregation’, as some critics have suggested.

‘It’s about giving LGBT students access to a supportive base in which to launch themselves comfortably, proudly and assertively in campus life.’