New options for student housing at Macalester continued to emerge throughout the 1990s and 2000s. The Veggie Co-op, where students collaborated with one another to cook homemade vegetarian meals, opened in its original location at 37 Macalester Street in 1992.¹ George Draper Dayton Hall opened in the fall of 1997, offering a variety of suite layouts for groups of three to six students, and contrasting the traditional dormitory layout with shared bathrooms seen in the other residence halls on campus, like Kirk, Doty and Dupre, and Turck.² In 1995, the college also established a new residency policy that required students to live on campus for their first two years of college. Dorm life was now officially a core part of the Macalester experience.

With these new developments in Macalester’s dorms came an evolution in the college’s approach to gender and housing. A gender-blind housing pilot program that would better support LGBTQ students on campus was first proposed in the fall of 2003 and made headlines across the country. The Mac Weekly noted that both the Star Tribune and Associated Press had quoted Tom Prichard, then president of the Minnesota Family Council, who expressed concerns about the policy increasing “sexual promiscuity” and the spread of STIs. In 2008, all-gender housing was established in a section of Kirk, allowing students to request housing not segregated by gender. Although these policy changes helped to better accommodate LGBTQ students on campus, students have still faced barriers in requesting all-gender housing, as reported on by the Mac Weekly in recent years.³

In comparison to the 1890s, dorms at Macalester are far less strict and instead focused on creating an inclusive community on campus. Buildings are no longer segregated by gender, and students enjoy the freedom of being able to come and go as they please. However, the same questions of how to best house and educate students that first emerged in Macalester’s earliest years continue to shape the college’s decisions around student housing.