When Stefan Koob visited a friend in Bush Hall, an “All Gender” sign taped to the restroom door immediately caught his attention.
“I was like ‘Hey, that’s cool. I’m gonna tweet it so other people can see it and know about it’,” Koob, a junior studying screenwriting and producing, said.
Excellent work Bush Hall. @OULGBTcenter #FreeToPee pic.twitter.com/Q2b3ISWeQt
— Stefan Koob (@Koobasaur) August 19, 2016
North Carolina passed a bill in March declaring that state law can override local ordinances such as public accommodations, according to ABC News. House Bill 2 states public places including schools and college campuses were only to provide facilities such as restrooms and lockers rooms designated for the use of people based on their “biological sex,” according to ABC News.
However, Ohio University will be taking a step in the opposite direction by planning to include single-user restrooms in new and renovated buildings around campus, Dianne Bouvier, the Director for Equal Opportunity and Accessibility, said.
OU passed an Equal Employment and Educational Opportunity policy in 2015, prohibiting discrimination against any person due to their gender identity or physical ability, as well as other discriminatory practices.
According to delfin bautista, the director of the LGBT Center, single-user restrooms are restrooms that can be used by one person at a time. The restrooms are often equipped with a toilet, a sink, a soap dispenser and a towel dispenser as well as an inside lock.
These restrooms were designed with the assistance of the Restroom Committee, a group of faculty members from different departments on campus who gathered to help determine how to make OU bathrooms more accessible for everyone.
The committee is composed of faculty members from departments such as the LGBT Center and the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program, because it seemed to be an effective way to organize the project, Bouvier said.
A survey conducted in February by the Restroom Committee found students and faculty members on OU’s Athens campus preferred the term "single-user" to describe the bathrooms, beating out terms like "all gender" and "universal."
Bouvier, who is also the ADA/504 coordinator, is a member of the Restroom Committee on campus. The committee has been working closely with the university to plan and design available space for the single-user restrooms that anyone could use, regardless of gender identity or physical ability.
“Because if you’re making changes for one group, you might as well make changes that work for everybody,” Bouvier said.
Part of the challenge in constructing single-user restrooms has been building them in already-existing spaces, bautista, who uses they/them pronouns and the lowercase spelling of their name, said.
“How can these spaces be modified in a resourceful and creative way?” bautista said. “It may mean having to take a little space from the men’s room and the women’s room in order to make space for a single user.”
Some renovated buildings currently include one single-user restroom, Bouvier said. New construction, including residence halls, will all also include one single-user restroom, she said.
Alden Library recently unveiled its first single-user restroom. The restroom was converted from an existing bathroom, according to a previous Post report.
Sam Haug, a junior studying wildlife biology and conservation and global studies — Asia, stressed the importance of single-user restrooms as they personally know people who would not feel safe using public restrooms with multiple stalls.
“I think (having single-user restrooms) just helps to create an atmosphere of safety and acceptance,” Haug, who is a worker at the LGBT Center and uses they/them pronouns, said. “(The restrooms) just allow people to do what they gotta do.”
The single-user restrooms are a way the university is acknowledging the community and finding ways to best serve them, Bouvier said.
With the plans for the new single-user restrooms being completed, the Restroom Committee is now ensuring information about the location of these restrooms is known to the community, bautista said.
“We all have to go to the (restrooms); it’s something that is universal,” bautista said. “We all have the right to feel safe and to use the bathroom in peace.”
