Students and staff interviewed this week in Washington, D.C., shared their thoughts on gender neutral bathrooms, which have become common at American University.
Tiffany Speaks, senior director for the Center for Diversity and Inclusion, said bathrooms are mainly being installed for everyone to feel welcomed.
Speaks quoted from American University’s website saying: “The university is committed to having safe and accessible campus restroom facilities.”
Violence against the transgender community mostly happens in public restrooms, according to a 2013 Williams Institute report. Derrick Clifton wrote that “roughly 70% of trans people have reported being denied entrance, assaulted or harassed while trying to use a restroom,” according to a 2013 Williams Institute report.
Mumina Ali, an incoming first year student at American University, believes the school is doing a great job by installing gender neutral bathrooms.
“This campus is about being inclusive and embracing diversity,” Ali said. “Not everyone has the same identity. So I think that’s the main reason is to create a safe space where people feel as if they’re wanted, rather than anywhere in the rest of the world, they can feel like that.”
Donna Femenella, 40, Course Reserves coordinator at American University’s Bender Library, believes that the gender neutral bathrooms create a safe space for members of the LGBTQ community.
“It’s not creating a barrier where a decision has to be made in terms of kind of what a person identifies as,” Femenella said. “So I think just being able to know that a bodily function you can just do without any barriers.”