On March 1, 2017 the Equal Restroom Access Act went into affect which mandated that all single stall restrooms are legally required to be marked as All Gender or Gender Neutral bathrooms.
Laney College has single stall restrooms, but many of them are still labeled by gender. The Laney Queers put together a map of all the single stall restrooms on campus and whether they are labeled, gendered, or available. You can find the map on the resources page.
As it stands, trans or nonbinary students who don’t feel comfortable using gendered bathrooms on campus have to walk to the Tower, the 4th floor of the Student Center, or the A building just to have somewhere to pee without fear of harassment. There are no single stall or all gender bathrooms in the library. This places an undue burden on our trans community navigating campus, negatively impacts their ability to access education, and rules out many places for studying.
The first step is to work with facilities to update the signs on the current bathrooms.
The second step, after bringing Laney into compliance with state law is to convert one gendered multi-stall bathroom per-building into an all gender multi-stall bathroom. All this requires is changing the sign on one (1) of the multi-stall restrooms in each building.
The A building has already accomplished this (near A238) with no issue.
This simple change would benefit the entire trans community on campus by proving that Laney takes its commitment to accessibility seriously by providing everyone a safe place to pee.
Having bathrooms that are available and accessible for trans students on campus would help make the Laney experience trans inclusive instead of trans hostile.
Further Reading:
Trans Inclusive College Health Programs
(by the American College Health Association)
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