Restroom in Taper Hall modified to gender neutral
Apparently this is one of the first lavatory changes in a USC-wide policy
The first floor of Taper Hall has modified its faculty bathroom into an “All Genders” lavatory.
A spokesperson from USC Facilities said: “I don’t know when the Taper bathroom was renovated, but I do know that we will be transitioning single occupancy restrooms to ‘All Gender’ instead of just handicap.”
The All Gender restroom on the first floor of Taper Hall, by room 101
Alejandro Schugurensky, a Sociology sophomore, said: “The new restrooms are a sign that our campus is moving towards a more accepting environment for those who might otherwise have felt uncomfortable, and it challenges people to rethink how we use public space.”
He added that despite initial skepticism some individuals may have, “we go to a university where most of the student body is generally accepting of others.”
Alejandro felt these incremental steps would make life more comfortable for everyone.
He said: “It’s particularly significant for those outside of the traditional gender binary, because ‘all gender’ is better at recognizing that a person can fall anywhere on the gender spectrum and still feel included in the process.”
These restrooms are marked by a black triangle encompassed by a white circle, combining the universal symbols for men’s and women’s restrooms.
Unlike previous signs, the all genders pictogram displays no “boy” stick figure or “girl” icon (which is the “boy” figure with a triangle over it).
Freshman Morgan Spencer said: “It’s dope.”
She thinks the idea is “awesome” and “pragmatic,” firstly because it solves the issue of gender norms.
Morgan added: “We’ve all been in that situation where the line for the women’s restroom is 500 miles long and there’s no line for the men’s, but we feel this weird social pressure to stay in our gendered line – it just increases wait time.”
A photo from inside the restroom
It appears this is a first step toward campus wide gender neutral bathrooms.
At present, there are a number of already modified bathrooms at the university, with this number on track to increase as the semester progresses.
These are the locations of all available gender neutral bathrooms on USC’s University Park Campus