Gender Neutral Hall Snafus

Posted by Charli Renken in LGBTQ+

Jessica Oliver stands in front of gender neutral bathroom. Photo by Lauren Eubanks.

After the success of last year’s gender neutral hall, LGBTQ+ students on campus were excited to return to an inclusive living space. However, due to the closing of LaSalle, miscommunication and a push to fill residence halls to capacity, the gender-neutral hall this year has been less than ideal.

Last year there were two bathrooms in St. Michaels B200, both completely gender neutral. The hall was designated only for those who had signed up for the hall. The “door decs” had been carefully made to include the student’s preferred names rather than their legal ones.

This year, however, things have changed. The hall was moved from St. Michael’s B200 to B100, one floor below and, while there are three bathrooms, the only gender-neutral one is a single-use facility. There are also many students who didn’t sign up to be in the gender-neutral dorm who were placed there after the closing of LaSalle, making the hall a “hybrid of what it used to be,” says Housing Director Connor Nelson.

While most residents feel that DeAndre Montoya is doing a good job with the hall, it was not communicated to him that he would be the hall’s RA until what many feel was last minute. Because of this, “door decs” had residents’ legal names, rather than their preferred names, something that is very important to transgender students. While this wasn’t Montoya’s fault, many students felt anxiety over the decorations.

“[When I chose to live in the gender-neutral dorm] I was expecting that the bathroom signs wouldn’t still be up,” George says. This is one of the major problems the hall is having this year. With only one gender-neutral bathroom for transgender and non-binary students to use, it’s hard for them to feel comfortable in their own residence. Many residents want the signs taken off so that all of the bathrooms are gender neutral.

“I tried to take the women’s sign down with a screwdriver, but it was glued to the door,” Montoya explains. He’s in favor of taking the signs down and wants everyone in his hall to feel comfortable. While there are many students who continue to use the bathrooms as if they already were gender neutral, many students still don’t feel secure doing so.

Otto Yunker sits in the dorm in the gender neutral hall. Photo by Lauren Eubanks.

“I just don’t feel comfortable walking in there,” hall resident Rian George says of the men’s bathroom. George is a new photography major who specifically chose the hall because he is transgender. He often has to wait for the gender-neutral bathroom to be free before using it. While he enjoys the gender-neutral bathroom that is available, he wishes there were more.

“Last year it was made known that this was the gender-neutral hall,“ says Jessica Oliver, a transgender woman who lived in the hall last year and decided to continue living there this year. “This hall was a big deal when it first came to be.” She feels that there wasn’t as much thought that went into this year’s gender neutral hall. “It just kind of felt like ‘Here you go. Here’s a hall.’ ” While Oliver likes her roommate, he isn’t a student who opted in for the special interest hall. “He’s really understanding but I got lucky. It could have been much worse.”

“We took our [door decs] down immediately,” says George. He and his roommate, Otto Yunker, who is non-binary, created their own door decorations with their preferred names. Other residents removed their names completely and do not have anything identifying that they live there. Had Montoya been made aware of his hall assignment sooner, he would have had more time to reach out to students for their preferred names.

“This school needs to communicate with us more,” says Colin McIntire, president of SFUAD’s LGBTQ+ alliance COLORS. He believes a lot of the problems with the hall this year arose out of a lack of communication. “We have enough interested students to fill the hall, but it just didn’t happen this year with all the changes.” McIntire feels that many students weren’t made aware of where the gender neutral hall was going to be and therefore didn’t know where or how to sign up. “We have a lot of people who want to be in that hall, but we can’t force room changes so it makes things difficult.”

Nelson has been working on and off the clock to try to resolve problems with the hall this year but says it’s a complicated issue on both sides. While there was a survey sent out last year to gather information on how the residents felt about the gender-neutral hall, very few people filled it out. There was also an email sent out and a separate housing form for the hall, but those didn’t fair well either in getting students who were interested in the hall, into the hall. Unfortunately, housing didn’t have a lot to work with.

DeAndre Montoya, RA of St. Michaels B100, is trying his best to be accommodating. Photo by Lauren Eubanks.

“Only half of the residents from last year’s hall signed up this year,” Nelson says. This partly has to do with students graduating, leaving the school or moving into the apartments. With the closing of LaSalle, housing was forced to fill the hall. “We tried our best to fill that hall last,” Nelson says, but there just wasn’t any other option. When all other halls filled up, they were forced to put students in St. Michael’s B100. Because of this, they couldn’t force residents who hadn’t signed up to be part of a fully gender-neutral hall. Not everyone feels comfortable with mixed gender bathrooms, so the single-use bathroom on the floor was installed with an “All Genders Bathroom” sign. “There’s just no easy solution,” he says. When it comes to taking down the bathroom signs, he says there are issues. “Everyone in the hall would have to be OK with removing the signs,” he says.

Montoya believes that the majority of his residents would be okay with removing the signs and plans to create a poll to decide. “I want everyone to feel comfortable living here,” he says.

Nelson is planning to meet with COLORS to brainstorm ideas of how to make the hall better for its LGBTQ+ residents. McIntire has already met with Nelson once and looks forward to working with him more. While the state of the gender-neutral hall is less than ideal now, both McIntire and Nelson are positive that they will come to some sort of solution. If anything, the gender-neutral hall will definitely available to students next year, hopefully with all the kinks worked out.