Student Government Association installed new gender-neutral bathroom signs in several places on campus.
SGA President Reid Powell said he had the idea to install gender-neutral bathroom signs last year when he was vice president.
“It was a project that did not see its completion under that administration, but when I stepped into the presidency role in November, it was a big goal of mine to get this project started,” he said. “Over Christmas break, I reached out to some people on campus who I thought could give me guidance and opinions as far as what we wanted the signs to say because we were, of course, trying to create an inclusive restroom, and the signs we were replacing were not inclusive at all.”
Powell said he worked with a local company to design the new bathroom signs, and they were installed March 31.
Powell said installing gender-neutral bathroom signs will be a two-phase plan. The installation this semester was phase one, in which single-stall restroom signs were replaced in Tom and Brenda McDaniel University Center and in-residence halls. There were two replaced in the university center, four in Walker Hall, three in Methodist Hall and one in the Cokesbury Court Clubhouse.
“We replaced all of those single-stall restrooms, and this was an easy phase one for us because they’re all buildings who are managed by student affairs, who are very supportive of the project,” he said.
Powell said he hopes to work with Dr. Talia Carroll, vice president of diversity and inclusion, to expand the initiative past single-stall bathrooms and to include more buildings.
“I think the ideal goal for most of us is trying to have at least one inclusive restroom in each of our main buildings on campus,” he said. “That will mostly include the multi-stall restrooms, but we’ve identified single stalls as well.”
Powell said it’s important for the campus to have inclusive signage.
“The thing about single-stall restrooms is they should be for anyone to use except, of course, society has this implication that there is a symbol attached to the male and the female gender, and which is currently what most of our single stall restrooms are using, and we know that’s not all of our students’ gender identities or expressions, so it’s important that we have an inclusive sign that doesn’t attach gender to the sign so all of our students feel comfortable using that restroom,” he said.
Jonah Muscarella, acting junior, said only changing the signs on single stall restrooms feels performative.
“I appreciate efforts for gender-neutral bathrooms, but if possible, I would just like to see that involving the gendered bathrooms,” he said. “I think those bathrooms outside the Caf were already just general family bathrooms. I’ve used both of them, so seeing the sign change to be like, ‘this is an inclusive bathroom now’— we were already using both.”
Muscarella said he likes the idea of having multi-stall bathrooms be gender-neutral as well.
“No bathrooms should have genders. It’s a toilet. Toilets do not need to be gendered,” he said. “Something I would like, as far as making the bathrooms on campus more neutral go, I would love to have bathrooms in buildings like Gold Star and Fine Arts to be gender-neutral because I would love to use the men’s restroom, but I don’t necessarily feel like I’m comfortable going in there because I don’t necessarily pass as a man.”
Muscarella said he thinks SGA’s end goal of having gender-inclusive bathrooms in every building is great.
“That I dig,” he said. “Once the plan is enacted and there are gender-neutral bathrooms in every building, I know in my little trans opinion, I think that’d be great.”
Powell said changing signage to be more gender inclusive may not affect most students, but he hopes it will be meaningful for the students it does impact.
“If we can make students feel included by changing the sign, of course I’m going to do that no matter how many students it impacts because of how important it is to me that every student on our campus feels valued and included in our community,” he said.
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