USC’s push towards bathroom accessibility and all-gender restrooms has sparked conversations in the last five years. But as of the latest campus-wide survey, only two multi-stall, all-gender restrooms on campus are noted.
Multi-stall, all-gender restrooms serve members of the community who want to use a restroom “regardless of their gender identity, expression, and/or embodiment,” according to the Lionel Cantú Queer Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Current accommodations at USC continue to be mostly converted, single-stall restrooms. The LGBTQ+ Student Center notes only two all-gender multi-stall restrooms available on campus as of October 2019, one near the resources’ space in the Student Union and another in the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
“Not having access to gender-neutral restrooms is dangerous, and it leads to people not going to the restroom when they need to,” said Mya Worrell, a USC alumna and current program assistant at Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
In 2017, the Daily Trojan reported the university was planning to transition all single-stall restrooms to all-gender restrooms.
As most university buildings only feature multi-stall restrooms, the transition of single-stall restrooms to all-gender often left the community underserved.
“I mean the vast majority of bathrooms are still gender segregated,” said Jihyun La, a freshman quantitative biology major, in an interview with Annenberg Media. “I have not really seen USC trying to really do anything about [all-gender restrooms].”
La advocates for the wider acceptance of all-gender restrooms because they benefit those currently transitioning genders.
“A lot of people have imposter syndrome surrounding that sort of thing; ‘Do I really belong to the other [bathroom]?’” La said. “This choice is a deliberate choice that they [students] shouldn’t have to make every time they use the restroom, and it’s something they shouldn’t have to deal with.”
Though the university said there are 100 all-gender restrooms on University Park Campus and 47 on the Health Sciences Campus in an emailed statement, the university last updated its all-gender restroom list in 2019. The university’s list includes single-stall, all-gender restrooms.
USC’s efforts are comparable to other universities’ efforts, like the University of California, Los Angeles, which ranks third on CollegeChoice for best LGBTQ+ schools. USC, however, does not appear on this list. UCLA also includes single-stall restrooms in its count of all-gender restrooms, and its maps were also last updated in 2019.
USC’s newest all-gender restroom was added in the Colich Track and Field Center, according to an emailed university statement. This addition, though, is not reflected in USC’s list of all-gender restrooms. USC said it is updating the information.
“Student Affairs is working with campus partners to improve communication to students about this important resource,” the university said.
Mary Andres, a clinical education professor at USC who specializes in the treatment of sexual dysfunction, LGBTQ+ concerns said the lack of spending on all-gender restrooms derives from a lack of understanding of their importance.
“It’s not like we’re trying to have special bathrooms for gender non-conforming people or trans people,” Andres said. “We’re just trying to have an equitable experience.”
Andres calls for more widespread adoption of multi-stall, all-gender restrooms. She said she sees the use of a restroom as a normal bodily function, one that does not need to be separated by gender.
“I’ve seen a lot of trans-masculine women, who identify as butch lesbian, but they would go into restrooms and be accosted like, ‘You’re in the wrong room, sir,’” Andres said. “These are people who just want to go to the bathroom.”
Correction: This story was updated at 10:15 a.m. on April 21 to reflect the correct name of the LGBTQ+ Student Center.