As a student fascinated by the arts, I spend a lot of time in Ryder Hall. I go to the Ryder Theatre Lab to see shows my friends are in. My friends and I go to the Ryder classrooms to play piano together. When I’m in a university-led production, I’m usually in Ryder until pretty late at night. Last semester, it practically served as my second home when I acted in a play. So, naturally, I have to like the place.
In my first semester at Northeastern, I took a Media and Social Change class in Ryder. I liked the class and enjoyed its coursework. But I was mortified to use the bathroom during that class.
That might sound like a crazy statement to make, but let me explain.
There are male and female bathrooms on every floor of Ryder, but only one gender neutral bathroom in the entire building, on the third floor. As a first-year student, I had no idea where the gender neutral bathroom was located. I was on an unfamiliar campus, in an unfamiliar building, and there didn’t seem to be any bathrooms that I would feel comfortable using.
I had no clue where to look for a bathroom and was half-convinced I would have to go to a different building entirely. I would often sit still in class, silently panicking, trying to rack my brain on where I could find a gender neutral bathroom. Most of the time, I’d just give up and use the women’s restroom, much to my discomfort.
Even as a second-year, I still spend a considerable amount of time in Ryder, but that feeling of panic has never gone away. And while I now know where the bathroom is, getting to said bathroom is another story. In such a largely populated building, how could there be just one gender neutral bathroom on one of the highest floors?
With my extracurricular activities including rehearsals for plays, I already have so little time. That precious time could be spent memorizing lines or learning more routines, but is instead spent on an extended journey to the bathroom, which doesn’t feel like the best use of my time. It’s not only annoying, but just stressful.
It’s unfortunate, because I love Ryder. I love the things and people in it. But having to balance the things I love with lingering anxiety is frustrating.
On the one hand, Ryder is the setting for basically my entire curricular and extracurricular college career. On the other hand, it’s an awkward and long traveling period to use the restroom, coupled with another minute used to explain to my castmates why I’m always late by basically saying, “I’m trans, by the way. Did you know I need to use a separate bathroom than the cisgender ones?”
It’s embarrassing.
This confusing bathroom experience, unfortunately, is not uncommon for many transgender students like me. Gender neutral bathrooms at Northeastern are almost always in an inconvenient location. Some buildings don’t have a gender neutral bathroom on every floor. They may just have a few, maybe even one, like in Ryder. Or it may even be that the building does not have a gender neutral bathroom at all, like in Shillman Hall. I’ve never heard of there being only one female and male bathroom in a building — that’d be obscene. But in my case, I’ve had to look up a map of which Northeastern buildings have gender neutral bathrooms on more than one occasion.
Now you may ask, why does this matter? The lack of gender neutral bathrooms isn’t greatly diminishing my college experience. I can’t really say that I’m losing out on valuable collegiate experiences just because I had to mosey up to the fourth floor of the Curry Student Center to use the bathroom.
Here’s why it does matter: having to worry this much about such a minor issue like using the bathroom is demeaning in every sense of the word.
To have to think about where your next bathroom is going to be, to have to leave class for more than just a few minutes to use a bathroom on a different floor or having to leave the building you’re in and go to another one just to use the bathroom is just embarrassing.
A classroom environment should be a place where students shouldn’t have to worry about seemingly trivial things like using a bathroom. But if you’re a student who uses gender neutral bathrooms, this can be an added stressor to an otherwise “safe” environment. I have never heard of any of my fellow students who use binary restrooms having to go on a 10 minute quest during class time to find a bathroom. This is a uniquely transgender or gender-nonconforming student issue.
In the context of today, sure, bathrooms don’t seem like the biggest thing to worry about. The inaccessibility of many gender neutral bathrooms on campus is a problem, yes, but at the same time, there are more pressing issues facing the transgender community, including President Donald Trump’s re-election and what threats it may pose for the transgender community, the contention of accepting trans people in some areas or even the frightening fact that trans people die at a rate higher than their cisgender counterparts are much scarier than the accessibility of gender neutral bathrooms on campus.
But here I am, writing about such a “small” issue as toilets. Why? My answer is simple.
Every issue is an issue, no matter how small or how silly it may sound. There will be issues our community faces that may be a mountain to climb, especially after this last election cycle. But I cannot, in good faith, let something like this slide just because there’s something else at hand that’s “bigger.” If other students and I are disadvantaged by this, isn’t that “big” enough?
To repeat what the trans community has been saying for months now, these next four years are going to make trans and queer lives so much harder. And that’s going to include bathroom access.
Even the official Northeastern map I had been using to navigate my way around finding gender neutral bathrooms has disappeared. It disappeared alongside Northeastern’s diversity, equity and inclusion messaging, and with it went any hopes that Northeastern would stand by its trans and queer students during the foreboding Trump administration. It was a symbolic loss of hope, and a looming discomfort for all gender nonconforming students. Now it’s up to us students to say something.
In times like this, maybe now more than ever, we cannot let these small things fall by the wayside. I am sick of sucking it up because that’s what I’m “supposed” to do.
So, instead, I want to speak up about it. Here’s what I have to say: I want to use the bathroom. Plain and simple. When I want, wherever I want and it should not be difficult for me to do so.
Northeastern, if you care about your trans students, you will listen to us and make meaningful changes. There need to be more spaces that I, as a trans person, feel safe in, and you can start by making all gender neutral bathrooms more accessible.
Northeastern, it’s time for you to talk change.
Blakely Cummings is a second-year psychology and communication studies major. They can be reached at [email protected]
