Students Campaign for Accessible Gender Neutral Restroom in University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work

Did you know that the White House now has a gender-neutral restroom? This move is in line with much of the trans* friendly facilities. As a politico.com article released in April of 2015 states:

“The newly designated restroom is an example of how the administration has been advancing the discussion by raising the profile of transgender issues, an area of debate that is especially hotly contested right now. The restroom will be located in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where much of the White House staff works.”

AP Photo

There is also positive movement locally, as the city of Austin now requires all businesses to change their single-stall restrooms to be gender-neutral. In other words, single-stall restrooms must be accessible to anyone, regardless of gender identity or expression. Although tickets are not being written for violations of this policy, individuals can call 3-1-1 to report businesses that are not in compliance. 

At the University of Texas at Austin (UT) School of Social Work (SSW), students are campaigning to have an accessible gender-neutral restroom be implemented (full disclosure: the author of this blog post is leading participant of this campaign). While there is a single-stall gender-neutral restroom in the building, it is difficult to locate; many people who have used the building for years are unaware of its existence.

In an attempt to make the SSW building more trans* friendly, students organized the Gender Neutral Bathroom Campaign (GNBC) to work on this issue. Collaborating with the Social Justice Action Coalition, an established organization that allows students to put their social justice education into action, the GNBC planned a scavenger hunt to demonstrate how difficult it is to locate the current single-stall gender-neutral restroom in the building.

The second step for the GNBC was to distribute a building-wide survey to determine whether there was support for an accessible gender-neutral restroom. The results were favorable and demonstrated that a high majority of the respondents were in support of this campaign.

In April of 2015, three members (one of which was the author of this blog post) of the GNBC presented the results of the survey to the SSW faculty and staff. The GNBC gave a full report of the goals of the campaign, the need for trans* inclusive spaces, the results of the survey, and suggested steps for the restrooms in the SSW building.

The GNBC also distributed a survey to the faculty and staff during the meeting to investigate support or opposition more fully. The results have not yet been tabulated.

Lastly, the GNBC concluded that while creating an accessible gender-neutral restroom was a significant step, the bigger picture of creating gender and sexuality inclusive practices at the SSW should be the long-term goal.