A GENDER NEUTRAL BATHROOM SIGN HANGS in a hallway of a college in Colorado. UW students have began a push for gender neutral bathrooms on campus utilizing the WyoVocal platform.
A petition to add gender-neutral bathrooms at UW has received support on ASUW’s WyoVocal page, but still has a long way to go before the student senate is obligated to address it.
The issue is important to transgendered individuals and other groups that feel out of place or fear harassment when using traditional male- or female-only bathrooms, Spectrum RSO public relations/historian Cylieann Erickson said.
“Trans individuals and gender non-conformists often face discomfort, discrimination, in some cases violence when they make the decision to use either a male or female restroom,” Erickson said. “Nobody should experience these obstacles when using the bathroom and gender-neutral restrooms help to eliminate these situations.”
Robert West, ASUW director of institutional development, said the petition, which was sitting at 141 votes at the time of print, needs to reach 400 votes before the senate will do further research and development, as per ASUW policy.
“ASUW is aware of the issue, but until we get a clear stance from WyoVocal, we’re not going to be looking into it,” West said. “The good thing is that the university is already kind of taking these issues into consideration when designing new buildings.”
The half-acre renovations, for example, include gender-neutral bathrooms. But West said these improvements are not inevitable.
“I don’t think we can say we don’t have a stance on it and ‘oh, it will happen over time’ because it’s been proven throughout history that if you do that, nothing really changes,” he said. “Eventually I think ASUW will have to play a part in that to make sure that it is actually instituted on campus.”
Hunter Callahan McFarland, a political science major concerned with social justice issues, shared the anonymously submitted petition. She said she would like to see gender-neutral bathrooms in as many campus buildings as possible.
“I know that it’s very costly for the administration and that’s one of the reasons they haven’t pushed for it,” she said. “But I think that overall, it will help make our campus look like a safer environment. I know of a lot of people who are non-gender conforming who chose the university they attend based on having gender-neutral bathrooms.”
According to a Huffington Post article published last year, more than 150 college campuses nationwide now have gender-neutral bathrooms, in part due to their secondary benefits.
The Advocates and Allies RSO stresses that gender-neutral bathrooms would make life easier for people with disabilities who need assistance using the restroom, fathers taking their young daughters to the restroom and women in general.
“All-gender bathrooms would promote gender equality by allowing women and men the same opportunity to use available facilities,” Sean Slagle, emeritus officer for Advocates and Allies, said. “This prevents women from having to wait in long lines while there are stalls available in the men’s restroom.”
Advocates and Allies wants to see a campus-wide policy by the end of the year to replace the “patchwork” of policies across campus now, which in some places is trans-inclusive and in other places is non-existent.
“Advocates and Allies realizes that advocating for social change is a long-term endeavor,” Slagle said. “The first phase of advocacy is a campus-wide transgender-inclusive restroom policy.”
It has yet to be seen if the petition on WyoVocal will garner enough support to encourage widespread change at UW.
