The bathrooms located across the hall from Rathskeller Hall in the Student Union have new signs designating them “universal restrooms,” or restrooms which are available to all genders. These new signs were placed on Wednesday, Jan. 20 according to Community Engagement Coordinator with the Office of LGBTQ Affairs, Shanna Meek.
The bathrooms have become gender neutral to alleviate any discomfort that some members of the LGBTQ community may experience when using gendered bathrooms.
“I think it’s really nice, because there are a lot of people, especially who come in [the GLBTQA Resource room], that don’t feel comfortable to go into any sort of gendered bathroom,” Meek said. “They don’t feel safe and either one that they go in, they could be beat up or looked at weird. It’s just nice to have a non-gendered bathroom so that they can go in and they don’t have to worry about people getting freaked out.”
Within the two days the signs have been placed there have already been a few complains over the change.
“We’ve already had a couple occurrences of people looking at the bathrooms and saying that they don’t want to go in there because there could be a man or a woman in there,” Meek said. “There are plenty of other bathrooms for those people to use, including the bathrooms directly upstairs from the gender neutral bathrooms. I think you can have a problem with them, but don’t make it more of a problem than it needs to be. It’s only two bathrooms.”
Universal restrooms now available in Student Union
Photo credit: Joshua Cunningham
