Advocates to push gender-neutral bathrooms at colleges
EUGENE, Ore. - The University of Oregon has opened gender-neutral dorm rooms where even the bathrooms are shared by boys, girls and transgendered students, but many in the gay community want to expand gender-neutral bathrooms on college campuses statewide.
“We’re looking at making sure all people have basic rights,” said Kelsey Jarone, a board member with the Oregon Student Association. “This is not a special rights conversation. I want to see bathrooms made more accessible to various groups.”
Jarone said the student group plans to introduce legislation next session that requires single-occupancy, gender-neutral restrooms on all college campuses.
She said the concern is largely for transgender students who some say may not feel comfortable using men’s or women’s bathrooms. And she said it’s a safety issue.
“If you walk into a building and you can’t find a space that’s comfortable for you to use a restroom - that can lead to urinary tract infections and all kinds of things.”
“We do a lot of things by gender. We assume that everything needs to be divided by gender,” said Chicora Martin, director of the U of O LGBT Education and Support Services. “And maybe at one time, culturally, that was true. But I think we’re seeing more and more, with every civil rights movement, gender doesn’t have to be the defining variable.”
One critic of gender-neutral bathrooms is Russ Walker with the tax watchdog group FreedomWorks.
“Because someone can’t decide whether they’re male or female, the state of Oregon and taxpayers of Oregon now have to make special arrangements for them until they figure it out,” he said.
A spokesman for the University of Oregon said if building a single-occupancy bathroom will make the school a more welcoming place, it is happy to make that change.
