By Kerry Gaynor
Murphy News Service
In recent years there has been a move to incorporate gender neutral bathrooms into public buildings across the nation and on the University campus. This semester’s recent activism by the Whose Diversity? group demanded university policy makers have at least one gender-neutral restroom in each campus building.
While many campus buildings have gender-neutral bathrooms, many still fall short, says Jen Bentrim. Bentrim works with the University’s Transgender Commission working to raise awareness of trans issues, including mapping campus’ gender-neutral restrooms and restrooms with the potential for gender-neutral status.
Currently, there are 220 designated gender-neutral, single-stalled restrooms on campus. President Kaler cited only 113 designated gender-neutral restrooms in a February Press release. While both these numbers may seem high, West Bank and the St. Paul campus are still sparse according to Bentrim’s current map.
“[T]he biggest thing that jumped out at me was how many buildings do not have a single stalled restroom and how far somebody has to walk from point A to point B to find a safe place to pee on campus,” Bentrim said, “[S]ure, we have 200-something restrooms on campus, but they’re dispersed.”
Currently, Bentrim is performing a sweep of campus, with help from the Trans Commission, faculty and students, to find gendered, single-stalled restrooms. Ideally, these single-stalled facilities will only need signage change by University Facilities Management.
After the Whose Diversity? incident at Morrill Hall, President Kaler allocated $250,000 for assessing and adding gender-neutral bathrooms to university buildings by August of this year. Although Bentrim is reporting her information from the campus sweep to Kaler, she said she does not know if any of this funding will be assigned to her work.
While President Kaler is working on the proposed changes on campus, similar efforts elsewhere have not gone so smoothly.
University student Christian Haas was inspired to make a change for greater inclusivity in the Starbucks he worked for. His idea was to change the two gendered, single-stalled restrooms in the building to gender-neutral. After reaching out to his higher-ups and, eventually the corporate end of the company, Haas was told that there should be no issue moving forward with the project.
Then months went by without any progress, but Hass continued reaching out to his superiors. Eventually, after coordinating with new administrators, the restrooms were changed to gender-neutral signage, nearly a year after he began his project.
“If people don’t think it’s important, they won’t do it,” Haas said, adding that people don’t realize how much they can change if they don’t try.
Now, Haas has his sights set on the Washington Avenue Starbucks nearly the East Bank of campus. The layout is the same, two single-stalled bathrooms that could easily be changed to gender-neutral status.
“It’s very exciting to see…how many opportunities we have on campus to make it better for everybody. Because if we go to gender-neutral status, it not only helps transgender or gender nonconforming people, it basically doubles the restrooms for everybody…It’s universal,” Bentrim said.
As for the rest University of Minnesota, Bentrim is hopeful that her research and simple signage change can add around 100 gender-neutral bathrooms to campus. She expects her project to be complete in six months to a year.
Reporter Kerry Gaynor is studying journalism at the University of Minnesota.