![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/IMG_6614.jpg\")
<\/a>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.<\/p>\n
\u201cPhase two will be looking at broader washrooms as we do our regular capital upgrading over time,\u201d says Yates, \u201cbut it is on our priority list.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u201cdid not require waiting for renovations and capital money to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
CCSS pride director Anthony Pica says he\u2019s 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\u2019t always allow for that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a really great initiative. It\u2019s a small start to a really great beginning,\u201d he says; in the future, he\u2019d like to see multi-person all-gender washrooms on campus, but \u201cthat is a conversation that hasn\u2019t started yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grant says that it\u2019s difficult for Camosun to enter into conversations like that, as she says the college is \u201cchronically underfunded.\u201d (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.)<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at our Young Building it literally is falling apart,\u201d she says. \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
University Transfer student Yesong Park supports the idea of the new gender-inclusive washrooms, saying \u201cto make unisex bathrooms is for human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
University Transfer student Shaylee McLaren says these bathrooms make it so that people don\u2019t have to worry about feeling uncomfortable or feeling dysphoria when they have to go the bathroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they feel unsafe or uncomfortable in any bathroom, really, the fact that they don\u2019t have to worry about that specifically anymore is really great,\u201d says McLaren.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The Interurban gender-inclusive washrooms are in the east hallway of Jack White and the first floor of Campus Centre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Five single-occupancy washrooms at Camosun\u2019s Interurban and Lansdowne campuses were recently re-designated as being gender-inclusive. The college added signage to these washroom doors stating that they are \u201call gender\u201d washrooms and that \u201canyone can use this restroom, regardless of gender identity or expression.\u201d Camosun College Student Society (CCSS) external executive Rachael Grant says that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,171],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-september-21-2016"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12441"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12444,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12441\/revisions\/12444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}