Submission: Multistall all-gender restrooms would address nonbinary students’ needs

The University of California Student-Workers Union UAW 2865 won an important victory in 2014 on behalf of all students, faculty and staff: The UC agreed to guarantee academic student employees reasonable access to all-gender restrooms upon request. After the signing of this historic agreement, there was a flurry of construction activity in a number of UCLA restrooms. Plumbing was ripped out, dividers were knocked down and new locks were installed.

The promptness of the action made it seem like the university had suddenly realized its obligations to gender non-conforming students and workers. But the way UCLA was interpreting its obligations left us at the union confused. The university fulfilled its obligation to provide all-gender restrooms by retrofitting a select number of single-gender, multistall restrooms to make all-gender, single-occupancy restrooms.

But decreasing access to restrooms makes little sense on a campus already struggling to accommodate a growing student population. It makes even less sense when we look at what the student body will look like in the coming years, as a recent UCLA study shows that 27 percent of California adolescents now express traits that are deemed gender non-conforming.

Moreover, the immediate intended beneficiaries of the new agreement have been left without reasonable accommodation: Cisgender persons often view single-stall all-gender restrooms as an opportunity for privacy and convenience.

As Laverne Cox, an Emmy-nominated actress, has recognized, restroom access is not just about a particular bodily need; it’s about the right to exist in public space. Nonbinary, gender non-conforming , gender-fluid, agender and transgender students simply cannot exist on campus without restroom accommodation.

We have a solution to this predicament: UCLA should convert one-third of multistall single-gender restrooms to multistall all-gender restrooms and upgrade privacy provisions in all multistall single-gender restrooms. Thus all multistall restrooms on campus would feature near floor-to-ceiling dividers and doors for toilets, such as those on the first floor of the Luskin School of Public Affairs building, and adequate dividers for any urinals.

By converting these restrooms, the university can comply with its contractual obligations not to discriminate against gender non-conforming employees, and there would be no reduction in restroom availability for any student or worker. In fact, all-gender restroom access had been shown to increase restroom availability for a group that comprises more than half of the campus population: women.

The university’s current approach, however, reduces access for everyone. While it initially might have appeared that UCLA promptly complied with its new contractual obligations, as time has gone on, that response of multistall to single-stall conversion is starting to look like disparate treatment. UCLA Labor Relations has stated explicitly that there is no policy requiring all-gender restrooms to be single-occupancy. Based on union efforts to seek redress, it appears one individual is subverting the cause of justice: UCLA building official Carl Newth.

In 2014, teaching assistants in the philosophy department requested a simple redesignation of an existing restroom on their floor in Dodd Hall to an all-gender restroom – as simple as changing a sign. Newth, however, refused this request. In a meeting with UC Student-Workers Union and UCLA Labor Relations, Newth stated his opposition to mixed-gender facilities, going so far as to claim that an existing all-gender, multistall restroom in the Counseling and Psychological Services building should not be allowed.

In 2016, UCLA finally arranged an expensive conversion of the Dodd Hall restroom to an all-gender, single-occupancy one, claiming it would facilitate access for people with disabilities. But the conversion did not include widening the entrance so that someone using a wheelchair could enter. The rights of so many on campus cannot be subject to the caprice of a single individual. Students with disabilities require accommodation and their needs, as well as those of gender non-conforming students, must be met.

The demand for all-gender multistall restrooms is not a demand to eliminate people’s right to opt for single-gender restrooms if they so choose. Neither is it to exclude people who identify exclusively with one gender from these new spaces. All-gender means all genders. Creating these spaces would only increase restroom access for all students, faculty and staff. They would serve people who need accommodation because of their gender identity, as well as those who would prefer them for other reasons, such as safety or convenience – parents accompanying children, caregivers accompanying the elderly and those with disabilities and differently gendered friends or couples.

Multistall, all-gender restrooms clearly reflect the diverse needs of the campus community.

Ideology is a thing that is built into physical space. Segregating people racially was once the norm in Westwood, and the architecture of UCLA reflects the university’s response. Facilities in Ackerman Union, like a hair salon, have their origins in UCLA’s efforts to provide basic services to African-American students in a time of pervasive and institutionalized racism.

Gender segregation is no longer an imperative for a growing segment of the population, but a binary conception of gender is still built into the physical structure of campus. It’s time that UCLA again takes the lead to accommodate changing societal norms and the legitimate needs of a changing student body.

Khan is a seventh-year Ph.D. candidate in geography, and Schaeffer is an eighth-year Ph.D. candidate in philosophy. Khan and Schaeffer are also campus stewards of the UC Student-Workers Union UAW 2865 and members of its Queer and Trans Working Group.