A group of University of California-Berkeley students known as the “Bathroom Brigade” is occupying restrooms and covering up the gender icons on the doors.
They want to force the administration to more quickly put gender-neutral restrooms in every campus building.
The Daily Californian reports that the group’s notices on restroom doors encourage “everyone, of all genders, to use this bathroom”:
Additional notices, designating the bathrooms as gender-neutral spaces, were placed over stalls, mirrors and towel dispensers, while participants handed out flyers to incoming students. …
“I think the university’s administration has dragged its feet,” said Sben Korsh, a first-year graduate student, in an email. “The campus has known about this issue for decades, and they are still throwing up bureaucratic barriers for providing these safe spaces for students.”
The school argues there’s more at stake than “safe spaces”:
According to Christine Shaff, director of communications for the campus real estate division, the process of converting gendered bathrooms can be far more complex than it initially appears. While in some instances, Shaff said, it costs as little as “changing a lock,” more commonly, conversion is a coordinated effort between architects and building officials, who must consider state building codes and the cultural and religious preferences of the many varied groups on campus.
“There’s all kinds of regulations that make changing the designation much more complicated than changing the sign on the door,” Shaff said.
Um, yeah. Here’s an instructional video on what the gender-neutral conversion of multi-stall facilities might look like.
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