A gender-neutral bathroom sign in the basement of the Stamp.
The SGA announced its goal to have at least one gender-neutral restroom in every campus building in a bill introduced for first readings this week, said Joseph Ehrenkrantz, the Student Government Association’s diversity director.
The bill, titled “A Resolution Supporting the Expansion of Gender Neutral Bathrooms Across Campus,” acknowledges that although there are 66 gender-neutral restrooms on campus, only 14 of 67 campus academic buildings have at least one gender-neutral bathroom, said Ehrenkrantz, a senior English and government and politics major. The SGA’s diversity committee is working with the LGBT Equity Center to remedy this deficit, Ehrenkrantz said.
“Having gender-neutral restrooms on campus is a safety issue for people who don’t conform to a gender binary, and I don’t think we should be asking anyone to leave a building just to find a safe place to go to the bathroom,” said LGBT Equity Center Director Luke Jensen. “We have a lot of buildings on campus that are older, that are not going to be renovated anytime soon, so we need to find ways to provide a safe place for gender-nonconforming people to go to the restroom.”
Freshman microbiology major Danny, who asked that his last name not be published, said the students on his mixed-gender floor collectively decided to make their two single-gender restrooms gender neutral. Danny said he does not see many gender-neutral bathrooms around the campus and the university should install more to accommodate transgender students such as him.
“Considering this is a campus with a very high queer population, I would say that more [gender-neutral bathrooms] would probably be better,” he said. “But compared to anywhere else outside of this university, this is really better than what you’d find in any other public setting.”
This university is one of the 2013 Top 25 LGBT-Friendly Colleges & Universities, according to Campus Pride, a national advocacy group for LGBT students, and Jensen said the university hopes to maintain and improve this environment by converting single-user restrooms into gender-neutral restrooms. Most of the older buildings do not have single-user restrooms to convert, so Jensen said he also wants an increase in multi-user gender-neutral restrooms.
“Anywhere on campus where there’s new construction or major renovation, there must be a single-user restroom available, but what are we going to do with all these buildings that aren’t going to be renovated?” Jensen said. “The only sensible thing to do is to move towards the multi-user gender-neutral restrooms.”
Multi-user gender-neutral bathrooms are typically made from smaller bathrooms with about two or three stalls, which makes modifications difficult, Jensen said. However, he said students will embrace the change “with proper education.”
“I just don’t think this will be a problem. I think our students will understand and embrace it,” he said. “It’s happened on other campuses — why can’t it happen here?”
Jensen said accomplishing this target will take some time, but it can be achieved.
“We don’t want anyone to ever have to leave a building to go to the bathroom, [but] there’s the realization that we can’t make this change happen overnight,” he said. “So let’s figure out where the biggest gaps are and start there and work towards that goal over a period of time.”
As long as there are no setbacks, Ehrenkrantz said, he expects the bill to come out of readings next week.
“We want to make campus home for everyone everywhere,” Ehrenkrantz said. “That’s really at the root of why we’re advocating for these policies.”
