Five single-occupancy washrooms at Camosun’s Interurban and Lansdowne campuses were recently re-designated as being gender-inclusive. The college added signage to these washroom doors stating that they are “all gender” washrooms and that “anyone can use this restroom, regardless of gender identity or expression.”
Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) external executive Rachael Grant says that the CCSS is very much in support of these changes to Camosun washrooms.
“It’s a much more inclusive structure to have washrooms on campus that are for folks of any gender,” says Grant. “The amount of students that benefit from all-gendered washrooms is quite large: people who are trans, folks who have a support worker who’s of a different gender, folks who have a child with them who’s of a different gender.”
Camosun College vice president of student experience Joan Yates says that the college is at phase one of this initiative, and that now they need to make sure that people know the washrooms are there.
“Phase two will be looking at broader washrooms as we do our regular capital upgrading over time,” says Yates, “but it is on our priority list.”
Yates advocates further consultation with students before moving ahead with multi-person all-gender washrooms, and she says the college will likely go that route in the future. She admits the current washroom setup does not fully meet the needs of students, but she says that the way this plan rolled out “did not require waiting for renovations and capital money to do that.”
CCSS pride director Anthony Pica says he’s really happy with what Camosun has done, adding that he would love to see all-gender washrooms in every building or on every floor, but he realizes infrastructure doesn’t always allow for that.
“I think it’s a really great initiative. It’s a small start to a really great beginning,” he says; in the future, he’d like to see multi-person all-gender washrooms on campus, but “that is a conversation that hasn’t started yet.”
Grant says that it’s difficult for Camosun to enter into conversations like that, as she says the college is “chronically underfunded.” (Grant adds that there will likely always be a place for gendered washrooms; for example, if a woman wears a niqab and needs to remove it, she may not be comfortable doing so in front of men.)
“If you look at our Young Building it literally is falling apart,” she says. “We had a window fall out of the Fisher building a couple of years ago. Our institutional funding is incredibly low from our government, and that inhibits a lot of things that the college could potentially do for students.”
University Transfer student Yesong Park supports the idea of the new gender-inclusive washrooms, saying “to make unisex bathrooms is for human rights.”
University Transfer student Shaylee McLaren says these bathrooms make it so that people don’t have to worry about feeling uncomfortable or feeling dysphoria when they have to go the bathroom.
“If they feel unsafe or uncomfortable in any bathroom, really, the fact that they don’t have to worry about that specifically anymore is really great,” says McLaren.
The gender-inclusive bathrooms in the Lansdowne campus are located on the first floor of Dawson, the second floor of Paul, and the first floor of Richmond House.
The Interurban gender-inclusive washrooms are in the east hallway of Jack White and the first floor of Campus Centre.