It seems like a simple enough system: there’s the men’s restroom, and the women’s restroom.

For some, it’s not clear why there’s a need for gender-neutral restrooms on campus. But a lack of these restrooms can force many members of the Syracuse University community to endure anxiety-inducing social situations, go out of their way to find a proper restroom or avoid using the restroom altogether. Like SU, universities and cities across the country are actively installing gender-neutral bathrooms to be more inclusive.

In December 2012, SU alumna and then-student Erin Carhart conducted a study of SU’s gender-neutral restrooms. Of 137 restrooms in 17 of the campus’s most-trafficked buildings, she found that only eight restrooms were single-occupancy and available to all genders.

That’s less than six percent.

Rachel Fox von Swearingen, co-chair of the University Senate’s Committee on LGBT Concerns, said that she was shocked about the few available gender-neutral restrooms on campus, given SU’s five-out-of-five-star ranking from the LGBT-Friendly Campus Climate Index.

“I wasn’t aware that we did not have very many gender-inclusive bathrooms on campus,” she said. “It says something like, ‘Well, we have this great rating, but we’re not actually invested in watching out for those people.’”

The need

The list of people who would benefit from having more single-occupancy, gender-neutral bathrooms on campus is “surprisingly long,” said Bryan McKinney, the LGBT Resource Center’s graduate assistant. That list includes not only transgender people but also anyone who identifies as gender-nonconforming or is perceived as gender-nonconforming. Other people who would benefit are parents with young children and people with certain physical disabilities, since single-occupancy bathrooms are more spacious and allow caretakers of another gender to accompany them.

Many of SU’s dorms, including Lawrinson and DellPlain halls, have single-occupancy bathrooms available to either gender. But for students spending long days on campus, the lack of gender-neutral bathrooms continues to pose a problem.

For many people who need or prefer gender-neutral restrooms, McKinney said the lack thereof can be “anxiety-inducing,” in addition to the obvious physical discomfort and potential health consequences of “holding it,” like urinary tract infections.

The lack of gender-neutral restrooms makes trans members of the SU community, and others who don’t identify within the strict gender binary, “feel like they’re not actually welcome,” said Fox von Swearingen.

“They are daily confronted with this binary gender system,” she said, whether it’s having to mark male or female on a form or having to choose the men’s or women’s restroom.

She added that, though the Committee on LGBT Concerns has recently made recommendations to the administration about accommodations in locker rooms and shower rooms, it’s been several years since the issue of gender-neutral restrooms came up in meetings. But that’s likely to change.

“I can safely say that it will probably be on the schedule when the committee meets Wednesday,” she said.

A growing trend

Colleges across the country are increasingly installing new gender-neutral restrooms or relabeling single-occupancy restrooms once marked men’s, women’s or family. On Friday, Harvard Divinity School tweeted a picture of new signs in Divinity Hall designating an all-gender restroom. Beneath the all-caps label, the signs specified, “Anyone can use this restroom, regardless of gender identity or expression.” Other colleges and universities have done the same in recent months, including Northwestern University, Illinois State University and Illinois Wesleyan University.

On Sept. 29, University of California president Janet Napolitano said that all single-stall restrooms on all 10 of UC’s campuses will be made available to people of all genders and that newly built or renovated buildings should include such restrooms. She also announced that students can apply to use a preferred name on certain school documents, even if their name hasn’t been legally changed — a victory for transitioning transgender students who do not want to be misidentified as the wrong gender by their former first names on university forms.

Other institutions, from universities to cities, are creating similar policies to prevent the violence that transgender people can face in restrooms.

“There are issues of violence, certainly, that come with gender nonconformity or being visibly gender-nonconforming,” McKinney said, citing the case of Chrissy Lee Polis, a transgender woman who was attacked after she used a women’s restroom in a Baltimore-area McDonald’s in April 2011. A video taken by an apparently unconcerned employee shows Polis being beaten for several minutes, bleeding from the mouth and nearly going into a seizure.

A more sweeping policy exists in the District of Columbia, where it’s the law that every single-occupancy restroom in a public place be made available to people of all genders. In October 2013, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter signed off on similar legislation that requires all new or renovated city-owned buildings to make gender-neutral restrooms available.

Leading the way

Despite such progressive city policies, Sasha Buchert, a staff attorney for the Transgender Law Center in California, said that colleges and universities across the country have been some of the most groundbreaking institutions in making gender-neutral restrooms available.

“As far as folks leading the charge, I think we’ve gained the most advancement with the universities around the country,” she said.

She added that gender-neutral restrooms can be a necessity for many students to thrive at college, since the question of where to find a restroom, or how to avoid using one, are unnecessary distractions from academics and peer experiences.

“The important takeaway point, for me anyway, is, look, transgender and gender-nonconforming youth should be focusing on their schoolwork,” Buchert said. “When you’re focused on which bathroom you should use and which alternative you should take to be able to deal with that situation, that takes away from your ability to be doing what you should be doing. And that’s excelling in your schoolwork.”

Published on October 8, 2014 at 12:18 am

Contact Maggie: mmcregan@syr.edu