GSA organizes survey and petition for all-gender bathrooms

The+GSA+survey+took+a+few+minutes+to+complete%2C+allowing+students+to+give+their+input+on+gender-neutral+restrooms.

Karissa Yeung

The GSA survey took a few minutes to complete, allowing students to give their input on gender-neutral restrooms.

Amador’s Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA) club has been organizing a survey about student support for an All Gender restroom, a single stall or more that will be open to people of all genders, on campus. In addition, they have also started a petition during lunch to achieve their goals. 

“This is something that we’ve been working on for a while. We are trying to expand student’s access to gender neutral bathrooms. I know we already have a couple of them but having them evenly spaced out and more available would be great for students so they don’t have to run all the way across campus to use the limited ones we have,” said Jaime Holling (’23), president of Amador’s GSA club.

Currently, there is an all gender bathroom in the front office and two in the new R building, although it is unclear as to if the restrooms in the R building are open to students. The purpose of the survey is to gain student input on how they feel about the possibility of turning one of the bathrooms into an all-gender bathroom with a single stall still in the works. 

“The majority of the bathrooms would remain boy and girl for those who are more comfortable in sex-segregated facilities. The GSA club sent out a survey to the school on this topic and out of the 607 students who took the survey, 80% of the students support having an all gender bathroom. Of the 20% who do not, nearly 30% of them would switch to yes as long as the bathroom was single occupancy,” said Benjamin Benson, Amador’s GSA club advisor.

The single stall bathrooms in the R-building are found on the first and second floor. (Leila Touati)

Many students believe that installing gender neutral single use bathrooms is an important progressive addition to the campus. 

“I think it’s a good step forward. In my opinion, gender is a social conflict. I think gender neutral bathrooms or at least single stall gender neutral bathrooms [should be put in place],” said Saesha Sharda (’24)

At lunch on Wednesday, the GSA club set up a table in front of the library to gather signatures for a petition in order to create more gender-neutral bathrooms on campus. They have gathered around 200 signatures – representing 7.3% of students – in one day. 

“We want to expand the number of safe spaces we have on campus and cater to every student that we can. I know a lot of trans and gender non-conforming students often feel uncomfortable using the bathroom of their birth sex and I feel this would help limit confusion and other incidents that can happen if they are forced to use those bathrooms,” said Holling