It’s taken the University nearly ten years to make more plans than progress on gender-neutral toilets. This is a story about a minority group’s representation on campus, yes, but it’s also an example of a wider problem: how the University’s institutional bureaucracy can get in the way of genuine progress.
We requested comment from the University on all the details to follow. Their bureaucracy dictates that all responses must be approved by an admin, which meant that by the time they sent us a very thorough, multi-faceted response, it was days past our deadline for comment – sort of like building dozens of gender-neutral toilets nearly ten years after first recognizing the demand. We expect to follow up on this story with more of the Uni’s response, but for now, back to toilet-talk.
While the Uni said that almost 300 toilets exist on campus that meet the requirements for GN, this designation hasn’t been made official. For now, the GN toilets that do exist are few and far between – with an emphasis on far. “My safety and identity should be valued as much as any other student’s,” an anonymous gender-diverse student told us. “It is atrocious that I have to walk up to 20 minutes across campus to find an all-gender toilet when my peers barely have to walk a few hundred feet. I should not have to compromise who I am in order to take a piss.” This is a common feeling; in fact, we read an entire 103-page study on the campus climate for queer students that mentioned this point several times.
While other universities in Aotearoa have created literally hundreds of gender-neutral bathrooms by simply changing the signs, Otago apparently remains at the start of a “bare minimum” three-phase plan, with gender-neutral toilet locations still absent from the student app. Not only that, but this ‘Gender Neutral Toilets Plan’ was only conceived last year – almost eight years after the Uni first formally acknowledged the need for more inclusive bathrooms. Now, this plan was constructed by Uni representatives that clearly do care about gender diverse students; the problems seem to have arisen from the complicated nature of University administration. Critic Te Ārohi took a look at what’s happened since 2014.
In 2014, Critic reported on an OUSA Queer Support proposal to transform half of campus’s bathrooms to be Gender Neutral (GN) after concerns were raised in an extensive student survey. Though Queer Support referred to this as a “best-case scenario”, the need for more gender-neutral bathrooms was clear, and it appeared that the Uni agreed: “Property Services has been asked to investigate the provision of gender-neutral facilities in existing buildings and for their inclusion in all new buildings. This process is underway.”
In 2017, after wide-scale additions of gender-neutral bathrooms by other universities, Critic followed up and found that “no progress has been made” at Otago, despite the investigation into more GN bathrooms having been “underway” for several years.
Last year, the process found some footing in the fruition of 2022’s ‘Gender Neutral Toilets Strategy & Plan’ by Campus Development. The three-phase plan is 15 pages long. OUSA Queer Support, who spearheaded the initial campaign, told us they were not even informed of this plan. And while the proposed three-phase plan includes some praiseworthy stuff, like allocations of sanitary bins within GN toilets, it does not specify a time frame other than “short-term”. Critic notes that neither this plan nor any mention of it seem to be present on the Campus Development project website, and that Property Services’ current Priority Development Plan does not list inclusive bathrooms as one of its projects online, either.
In the meantime, other universities have just gone ahead and changed the signs. AUT created 165 GN toilets around 2014, mostly by converting disabled toilets, which raised its own debate. Vic Uni changed 95 in 2010, with a good split between dedicated GN bathrooms and wheelchair accessible GN bathrooms (GN/A, or “all access”). This was at “no substantive cost”, and saw "no reports of gender-based violence in relation to bathrooms" according to a spokesperson in 2016.
At the same time, in 2016 Otago apparently only had 10 GN bathrooms, at least three of which are now gone. We were unable to find an updated list and instead resorted to literally walking around campus into all the previously-listed buildings to check if they had GN toilets. The map we used (pictured) often included staff toilets and GN/A toilets in the GN count. Now, by law, any new buildings constructed in the last 10 years ought to have a GN/A bathroom, and it seems like many new ones do. They’re just also the disabled bathroom, which isn’t the same thing as a dedicated GN toilet.
One student told us that “having only one [GN] toilet per building or floor is an immediately confronting experience. Instead of changing signs on current multi-stall gendered bathrooms and encouraging everyone to use them, adding one lone [GN or GN/A] toilet kinda immediately outs everyone using it.” This student explained that “one toilet means people will need to queue for it… people who may not be comfortable being seen using the explicit not-cis toilet.”
“Their entire eight-year-in-the-making plan is to change some bloody signs,” an anonymous LGBTQIA student told us. “How hard could that be? Fuck, give me a marker and I’ll go do it myself.” But while simply changing the signs could help, as was the case with AUT, this can sometimes come at the expense of the disabled toilets across campus. “Those who require gender-neutral bathrooms don't want to increase the load on all access bathrooms,” said a UniQ spokesperson.
As of 2023, it’s still unclear if or when campus will see more gender-neutral bathrooms – something UniQ has referred to as “inappropriate” and “egregious”, to which the University’s detailed-but-delayed response seemed to acknowledge. The group collectively reviewed the Uni’s ‘Gender Neutral Toilets Plan’ in a recent meeting, with UniQ execs concluding “It’s inappropriate for the Uni to bandy about its performative ‘Dare to be Proud’ campaign while they’ve been waiting eight years to, what - change some signs? It doesn’t take nearly a decade to achieve the bare minimum.”
Of course, it’s not that simple. But when it comes to bureaucracy, nothing is.
Gender-neutral (GN), Unisex, or All Gender: A bathroom able to be used by anyone of any gender
Gender-neutral Accessible (GN/A) or All Access: A single stall wheelchair accessible bathroom. These bathrooms also may be used by anyone of any gender.