In the towers of the Southwest Residential Area, bathrooms alternate between men’s and women’s on every other floor. The system is set up such that if students who identify as women were living on a floor with a men’s bathroom, they are expected to go up or down a floor in order to use a women-labeled restroom, and vice versa.
As they return to school in the fall, however, students at Southwest are not climbing stairs to use the bathroom. It doesn’t matter if the label says “men” or “women” -in my experience, students use whatever bathroom is on the floor that they live on.
Though in appearance this behavior may seem lazy – students not wanting to take the few extra steps to use their “correct” bathroom – those who actually experience the challenge of living on a floor with a bathroom they do not identify with understand how tiresome it can be to hike a staircase just to wash your hands. Moreover, going up and down the stairwell or the elevator in your towel after showering is an added inconvenience. All this makes the existing bathroom set-up inconvenient and unnecessary.
This trend of ignoring the bathroom gender labels seems to be more apparent in the men’s bathrooms as those who identify as women are more likely to utilize the men’s bathrooms than the other way around. Moreover, this gender-neutral tendency hasn’t caused any apparent traffic-jams or over-crowding.
The issues regarding gendered bathrooms on each floor of the tower go a lot deeper than mere inconvenience. UMass advocates for both inclusiveness and diversity, so why do towers today only provide two gendered restrooms? This alienates individuals who do not identify as either male or female, and it puts pressure on students to put labels on their gender identity.
In November 2016, students protested the university’s lack of inclusion. They filled up the bathrooms of Whitmore Administration building in a protest known as the “Sh*t In,” which demanded that UMass bring gender-neutral bathrooms all across campus. In addition to bathroom neutrality, this protest advocated for better funding for the Stonewall Center, a resource for LGBTQIA community members located on the UMass campus. Greater funding for the center would ultimately allow for stronger advocacy and money for actual change within the center, as well as on the entire campus. These actions called attention to this significant issue, as well as demanded the university live up to its presentation of inclusivity of diversity. Despite this action, the school has not made much progress.
Southwest’s five towers still only cater to men and women for restroom options and house only one gender-neutral bathroom in each lobby. Moreover, these are just single stalls entitled “public restrooms,” which is not enough. Those who identify as nonbinary or non-gender-conforming either must enter a bathroom they do not identify with or make a trip to the lobby of their building just to use a neutral bathroom. Making the multi-stall bathrooms on each floor gender-neutral would allow for everyone’s access and leave out the personal contemplations that can go into deciding what bathroom to use for some individuals.
Gender neutral bathrooms would ultimately remove the inconvenience that students are already avoiding by using whatever bathroom is on their floor, and would contribute towards a more accepting and inclusive environment on campus. Students have already been making their own advancements in this area – it’s time for the University to catch up.
Makailey Cookis is a Collegian contributor and can be reached at [email protected].
Elteegee • Oct 7, 2019 at 9:03 pm
When I lived in JQA in’83-84, co-ed floors in the Southwest towers all had co-ed bathrooms. They were officially co-ed, not just used that way, and men and women showered, brushed their teeth and used the toilet side by side. Every day. Other than guys occasionally leaving gross messes in there it was largely a non issue. There were single sex floors with single sex bathrooms for those who preferred that but no one had to walk to a different floor to use the facilities. I don’t know when/why they changed it but apparently it was an idea ahead of its time.
Meesh • Aug 23, 2023 at 9:20 pm
Are you kidding me with these comments? Fully coed bathrooms in a Southwest tower was no big deal??? A non-issue? I lived in JQA, 10th floor, in 1986-87. It was a party scene and a blast, but the coed bathrooms were DISGUSTING. I am still getting over the trauma. The partitions in the showers did not go all the way to the ceiling, so tall guys could look over and watch. Sure, the bathroom was cleaned daily EXCEPT on weekends, when everyone was going especially insane. I still recall the Sunday I walked in there to find pee, vomit, blood AND feces smeared everywhere. The quadrafecta. I completely support gender inclusion, but maybe the answer is separate bathrooms on the same floor, along with a gender neutral bathroom on the same floor. You know, like the rest of the state universities in this country.
Kathy • Oct 7, 2019 at 8:10 pm
From the early 1970s to the mid 1980s all bathrooms were coed. Nobody cared. Well, nobody involved with U-Mass. Some non-student, non-parent busybodies minded so Foster Equality Mikey banned them. it’s a non-event, I can’t believe people haven’t reverted.
Amin Touri • Oct 7, 2019 at 5:47 pm
Joey, I’m not censoring comments unless they’re like abjectly offensive or hateful or contain personal attacks (which does happen from to time) I was just out of town this weekend and wasn’t really looking at the site and approving comments my bad
joey • Oct 7, 2019 at 1:04 pm
I would write a critical comment but as we all know Daily Collegian doesn’t allow free speech or opinions that go against the diversity/SJW ideology.
David Hunt 1990 • Oct 7, 2019 at 9:52 am
“Back in the day” when I was at the zoo, the bathrooms were – theoretically – single sex. In practice, of course, they were co-ed anyway.
My concern is two-fold:
First, by explicitly NOT having female-only bathrooms, there’s nowhere to retreat to if people do get upset.
Second, in this day and age of #metoo if a guy sneezes wrong in a woman’s presence, this is ripe for all sorts of abuse.