Difficulty in accessing unisex bathrooms on campus will no longer be a concern for Algonquin students as new campaign has been launched to promote awareness among first-year students about the school’s facilities.
Positive space – the campaign is called – is renewed this year with the aim to provide students useful knowledge to LGBT-related issues. One of its tasks is to get students, especially newcomers, to know about unisex bathrooms within the campuses.
Algonquin’s Woodroffe campus currently has nine bathrooms designated as a “family washroom” in total. They are all single-occupant and scattered across campus. There is no guarantee that students know about these facilities in order to use them to their benefit.
According to two informal online surveys conducted by the Times with a total of 100 participants, 81 per cent of respondents don’t know where the bathrooms are located. Some only became aware of the existence of these bathrooms through the survey itself.
“Students often ask about location,” remarked Melissa Spears, counsellor for Student Support Services.
“We are putting up these posters all around campus,” said Spears, “to make sure people know where to they can access to gender-neutral bathrooms.”
According to Spears, students will no longer need to ask for the key from the front desk when they go to unisex bathrooms in H207, A121C and A221A as it previously required.
Because of their nature, the washrooms are closed by default; users need to press the wheelchair button next to the door to open.
There is a small green light under the button to indicate if the room is occupied.
Demand for more accessible gender-neutral toilets can also be heard from students. “We always say that we’re the inclusive generation. We are the ‘2016,’” said Dana Deline, a second-year social service worker student. “But are we really standing up to what we were saying?”
Deline advocates turning some of the current regular bathrooms into unisex ones. “We have such a large population of gender fluid, transgender or advocate individuals; so rather than forcing an individual to seek out a few bathrooms we have on campus, as it is so large, why not be more inclusive?” asked Deline.
While this proposal may spark controversy, as Deline also admits it’s a long shot, progression comes in another dimension.
“With lots of new construction projects on the horizon for both the SA and the college, there are conversations started regarding actually creating policy that would prescribe bathroom requirements for all new buildings,” said Egor Evseev, President of the Student’s Association.
“We have always had those bathrooms labeled on our maps and would point people to their direction when asked,” he added.
Amanda Marquis is one of the community advisors with residence life. She stresses the necessity for a consent awareness week at the college.