Finding the right roommate can be a difficult task. A night owl and an early riser might not be the best fit, while a studious person probably wouldn't want to live with an aspiring rock star. But can students of the opposite sex live together in harmony?

In recent years, more and more colleges across the country have tried to make it work.

This year, top schools like Stanford University and Dartmouth College have joined a list of about 20 colleges nationwide offering gender-neutral housing, which allows students to room with each other regardless of their gender. Nine schools have changed their policies within the last year to include gender-neutral housing, and another 12 colleges have said they plan to in the near future.

In the past, the specialized housing plans were mainly geared toward students who identified as transgender.

Joan Giblin, director of residential life and housing at Clark University in Massachusetts, said the change, made last fall, was well received by students. Giblin, who credited students with pressuring the school on the policy change, said it was a freshman who spearheaded the effort to alter the original policy in the first place. The change took less than two years to implement, she said.

Murray MacDonald, Dartmouth's associate director for undergraduate housing, said that while some alumni voiced concerns about the system, most students there supported the system after it launched last fall.

The level of student demand has not been the same here, though.

Peter Logan, the University of Michigan's housing spokesman, said the University is unlikely to follow the trend anytime soon because there's not enough demand from University students to warrant the change.

"From what I've been able to find out, there has not been before a significant expression of interest in this from the student body," Logan said. "We're not inclined to change a policy that we don't feel there's a demand to change."

The University provides gender-neutral housing options in some cases, but only for students who claim they don't identify as male or female and ask for those room assignments.

Gabe Javier, assistant director of The Spectrum Center, which handles lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender affairs at the University, said the housing office works closely with his group despite not making the gender-neutral option available to all students. He cited the availability of private and semi-private bathrooms as examples.

Javier said the idea of having gender-neutral housing at the University for all students is appealing, but that it may take time.

"I think we still have a long way to go before we would switch to something like that," he said.

Earlier this year, a plan to implement a gender-neutral housing policy at a New York school hit a wall when there wasn't enough student support to go through with it.

Officials at Ithaca College were ready to begin offering gender-neutral housing last fall but shelved the plan, citing a lack of interest from students. Linda Koenig, assistant director of housing and communications at the Ithaca, N.Y., school, said just four people requested the new living arrangement. Officials there had hoped at least 18 students would apply for the new plan, she said.

"We had such a small applicant pool that we couldn't justify moving forward," she said.

LSA junior Vinny Haddad said he would take advantage of a gender-neutral living option if it were offered at the University.

"I would probably think it would be easier to live with a girl," Haddad said, adding that people of the same sex often disagree with one another anyway.

Engineering sophomore Laura Ligeski said she wouldn't choose to share a dorm room with a man if gender-neutral housing were offered at the University.

"You're going to see a lot of shady business going on. It would just make everything more miserable for housing for students," Ligeski said. "Most people that would want to do that are probably coming (to the University) with a boyfriend or girlfriend. If they break up, then you have to find new rooms. It would be an entire messy situation."