UF will add 30 more gender-neutral restrooms in December.
These restrooms will be single-stall, meaning they will only be used by one person, and allow students who don’t conform with traditional gender identities to feel included, said LB Hannahs, the director of UF’s LGBT Affairs.
There will be seven gender-neutral bathrooms in Cypress Hall, said Joselin Padron-Rasines, the UF Student Body president. There will also be 26 restrooms around campus, with seven in the Reitz Union and 19 in academic buildings.
All of the stalls that will be made gender-neutral were unisex or family restrooms before, she said. Some of those will be kept as unisex and family restrooms.
Student Government will label the bathrooms with signs, which UF Housing and UF Academic Affairs will pay for, Padron-Rasines said. The signs were originally estimated to cost between $30 and $40 each, according to an SG report on the bathrooms.
This would bring the cost for all 30 signs to about $900 to $1,200.
A task force comprised of SG and LGBT Affairs students was created in May to find bathrooms with signs that could be changed to gender-neutral. Padron-Rasines said she thinks the gender-neutral bathrooms will help make all UF students feel included on campus.
"This is a first step," Padron-Rasines said.
Hannahs said finding bathrooms that could be converted took a long time.
"Obviously this (university) is such a large place, so it’s hard to find all the (gender-neutral) places," Hannahs said.
The gender-neutral bathrooms would not only serve transgender and nonconforming gender students, Hannahs said, but any student who wants to use a restroom more privately.
"It really serves all students," Hannahs said.
Contact Caitlin Ostroff at costroff@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @ceostroff
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