Resolving Safety Issues in Fanning Bathrooms

In the fall of 2011, students began to advocate against gender-inclusive bathrooms in public buildings at Connecticut College. After several meetings with students, history professor and director of the LGBTQ Center Jen Manion as well as other members of Connecticut College faculty, Dean Armando Bengochea compiled a list of bathrooms that could easily be converted into gender-inclusive bathrooms.

Dean Bengochea stated that compiling the list and moving forward with the conversion is the “inclusive thing to do on a campus where we recognize that some students might not think of themselves as having a fixed gender.”

According to Professor Manion, “Converting the bathrooms has been part of a larger project to make the college more safe and empowering to LGBTQ students.” Gender-inclusive bathrooms are important not only for the comfort found in no longer being in the “wrong” bathroom, but also for the safety of transgendered students at Conn.

When people are not easily read as the gender of the bathroom they are using, they can face harassment and intimidation. Furthermore, some individuals, men in particular, also experience threats because of their perceived sexual orientation in single-sex public bathrooms.

The Gender Neutral Bathroom campaign at University of Chicago states: “Assault, insults, and police intervention are frequently part of the reality of sex-segregated bathrooms for butch women, transgender people, and others.”

Dean Bengochea said, “It was important to identify where on campus we have single-stall bathrooms in order to install a lock on the inside and make them unisex so there is no crisis about which bathroom to use.”

However, some confusion in the process of converting the fourth floor bathrooms in Fanning has led to the suspension of the campus-wide project until the issues in Fanning are resolved.

Dean Bengochea explains that bathrooms in Fanning pose a unique problem because there are only bathrooms on the first and fourth floors. Because the bathrooms on the first floor have multiple stalls, the bathrooms on the fourth floor were chosen to be converted. However, because the signs were placed before the locks were installed, some members of the campus community were under the impression they would have to use the bathroom while people of different genders were also in the bathrooms.

A few faculty members in Fanning under this impression began circulating a petition against the bathroom conversion. Professor Manion stated, “I believe the action was irresponsible, inappropriate and damaging to the LGBTQ community. As a result, the college has delayed implementation of gender-inclusive bathrooms across campus, and we are still awaiting resolution.”

Two meetings were held in January and February in order to allow faculty and staff to voice their concerns regarding the bathroom conversion. Although Dean Bengochea noticed most of the faculty and staff at the meetings was in support of the conversion, some worried that the bathrooms would become even more congested if multiple people could no longer use the bathroom at once.

Despite the college’s response of removing the signs and suspending the project while they resolved the issues, certain members of the community in Fanning have taken upon themselves to print out single sex bathroom signs that read “Men’s (at least for now)” and “Women’s (at least for now.)”

One student, Lily Bartlet ’13 stated that she feels “the signs are immature and offensive” to members of the LGBTQ Community at Conn because they are demeaning to the importance of a safety issue for transgendered students.

Carolyn Sunstrom ’14 said, “There is no reason for Conn to not have gender variance bathrooms available in every building. Every time I see the signs “Men’s Room” and “Ladies’ Room,” I am personally offended and am made to feel uncomfortable as a queer person on this campus. I know others feel the same way.”

In fact, some members of the community opposed to these signs have been pulling them down whenever they see them posted, but they consistently reappear.

Dean Bengochea has stated that although the conversion has been monetarily suspended, he remains committed to making the bathrooms gender-inclusive.

The administration has hired a firm of plumbers to determine if it would be cost effective to create a new gender neutral single stall bathroom in order to solve the Fanning conflict. However, he also acknowledged that bathrooms are the most expensive addition to buildings and this may not be possible, but that by the end of the semester a solution regarding the bathrooms will be reached regardless. Bengochea explained that Conn will convert the rest of the single-stall bathrooms around campus once the issues in Fanning have been resolved.

Still, according to Manion, “the college should immediately put the unisex signs up instead of caving to the pressure of some outspoken faculty…It’s not about comfort— it’s about safety.”

On the topic of the opposition, Sunstrom said, “A person cannot oppose having gender variant bathrooms and call themselves an ally. To do so would demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of the ways homophobic, transphobic, and patriarchal structures function in our society.”

Students at the college are used to gender-neutral housing, in which the bathrooms in residential halls are mixed. These facilities provide transgendered students with a certain amount of safety that they do not find in most public buildings at Conn.

Although Dean Bengochea has stated his commitment to make the transition from single-sex to gender-inclusive in these public buildings, he is leaving Conn at the end of the semester. Students and faculty within the LGBTQA community at Conn are concerned that without administrative support of this effort, its progress may remain unresolved.