The Student News Site of Harvard-Westlake School

The Harvard-Westlake Chronicle

The Student News Site of Harvard-Westlake School

The Harvard-Westlake Chronicle

The Student News Site of Harvard-Westlake School

The Harvard-Westlake Chronicle

GSA to pay for all-gender bathroom signs

The Gender-Sexuality Awareness Club will use money received from a club grant to change the existing signs on the doors of two single-stalled restrooms on the first floor of Mudd Library and the third floor of Chalmers Hall.

The new all-gender signs will depict a toilet without male and female gender-binary images.

“We want people who are not comfortable going into a multi-stall restroom because of their gender identity to feel safe no matter how they express their gender, or if they don’t feel safe going into a multi-stall restroom in a public setting,” GSA president Perren Carrillo ’15 said.

The club presidents, along with faculty adviser and Director of Studies Liz Resnick, met with Head of Upper School Audrius Barzdukas to discuss the logistics of changing the signs.

“I’m not comfortable using restrooms in public for my personal reasons,” Carrillo said. “In the library, there’s already a guys’ restroom upstairs, so there isn’t really a need for a [male] single-stall restroom in the same building.”

The GSA hopes to build more restrooms around campus so that students who want to use the all-gender restrooms do not have to go out of their way, Carrillo said.

“I didn’t really think that the school would respond, but I think that it’s incredible that they’re taking action,” Sarah McAllister ’15 said. “I hope that these restrooms help people who don’t feel comfortable to feel safe and accepted in our community.”

In addition, the GSA wants to plan a LGBT Awareness Week in the future.

“I think that these restrooms will bring important issues to the forefront about how we feel about them and how we can initiate change,” Assistant to the Head of Upper School Michelle Bracken said. “Being able to have conversation is key, so I look at these restrooms as a positive thing for our community.

 

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GSA to pay for all-gender bathroom signs