The Business Education Complex’s third-floor women’s restroom is now a family restroom. MPA student Peter Jenkins requested the change to accommodate genderqueer and transgender students.
Jenkins uses the term genderqueer and the pronoun they as an identifier instead of he or she because they identify as a combination of both male and female.
Changing a restroom or speaking out about certain questions on medical papers are small changes Jenkins said can make a difference.
Having a bathroom changed was about more than advocacy, it was a matter of safety, they said.
“I understand that some people who may have the same gender identity as me would just make the choice and feel really bad and internalize that,” Jenkins said. “So hopefully through my advocacy, even on the small things, positive changes will be made.”
Jenkins said they contacted E.J. Ourso College of Business Dean Richard White about a family restroom in the BEC because they found family restrooms safer than the men’s restroom.
“For a lot of people who don’t understand or don’t focus on gender identity very much, I look like a guy in a dress, and if they see me in the restroom, people get really upset sometimes,” Jenkins said. “Transgender people have one of the highest rates of being murdered of any group of people, and for me it is a safety issue.”
Jenkins said they used to wait to use the restroom or walk to the Student Union before the family restroom was created. White’s response allowed them to feel safer in a BEC restroom, they said.
College of Business Associate Dean Timothy Chandler was put in charge of restructuring the BEC bathrooms, an issue over which White expressed concerns.
White said there are not enough restrooms in the BEC, and a family restroom was already deemed necessary for after-hours safety.
“We’ve been looking at the bathroom situation here since we moved in,” he said. “There are not enough bathrooms in this building, but also we wanted a bathroom that met all the [Equal Employment Opportunity] standards. Most importantly, we wanted a bathroom that was secure after hours.”
EEO standards set guidelines on discrimination policies.
White said Jenkins helped accelerate the process. White also said one of the main policies of the College of Business is human dignity, and helping Jenkins was part of the policy.
“I travel around the country a lot, and I don’t think you’ll find a university with a higher sense of diversity and human dignity and interpersonal relations than LSU,” White said.
As an advocate for the LGBT community, Jenkins has seen the impacts of diversity at the University, and said they have seen mostly positive responses to transgender and genderqueer issues and accommodations.
Jenkins said they had hope for improvement and set a goal for family restrooms on campus.
“Something like restrooms, that’s a really simple fix — you literally just order new signs and you put them up,” Jenkins said. “I personally think that 25 percent of the bathrooms in the University should be gender neutral by the start of the fall semester. That would be a great goal that I think we could set.”