"Gender-Neutral" Bathrooms Are Increasing At Colleges

Kim Bellware huffingtonpost.com A popular student center at Northwestern University is the latest college campus facility to embrace gender-neutral bathrooms. New to campus this fall will be a pair of such restrooms -- sometimes called "all-gender" restrooms -- at the school's Norris University Center. "These are two gender-open bathrooms where students of any gender can go in, and use the restroom, and feel safe, regardless of gender expression or gender identity," Michelle Margulis, president of NU's Rainbow Alliance LGBT student group told CBS Chicago. The number of gender-neutral bathrooms has grown in just the past few years, incity-run facilities, workplaces and, most commonly, college campuses. There are more than 150 schools across the U.S. that have gender-neutral bathrooms, according to the University of Massachusetts Amherst's LGBTQ organization The Stonewall Center. Just this month, Illinois State University re-labeled their "all family" restrooms to "all-gender," a move Michael Shane McCreery of the school's Office of Equal Opportunity, Ethics and Access said "evidences the university’s efforts to have an inclusive environment.”