Harvard LGBTQ group calls for more gender-neutral bathrooms

The Harvard Undergraduate Queer Advocates, an LGBT student group at Harvard University, has started a petition seeking more gender-neutral bathrooms on campus.

“The petition was kind of born out of a simple idea that folks deserve to have access to restrooms that they feel comfortable with and that they feel safe in,” Aaryan Rawal, co-president of the HUQA, told The Harvard Crimson, a student-run newspaper.

The paper uses the word “they” as Rawal’s pronoun.

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The petition names seven academic buildings, “all first year residential halls that use hallway bathrooms,” and theater buildings as buildings that should have at least one gender-neutral bathroom but currently do not. 

It also requests that gender-neutral bathroom access be expanded in all academic buildings, specifically the Barker Center, Lamont Library, and Science Center.

The group asks for two monthly stakeholder meetings to discuss the project’s progress, wanting it done by the end of the 2023 fall semester.

The HUQA justifies these requests in the petition by saying that “forcing” transgender or nonbinary students to use “gendered bathrooms can lead to significantly worse mental health outcomes and expose them to heightened rates of sexual harassment and gender policing.”

Major academic buildings lacking gender-neutral bathrooms “undermines the comfort and safety of students who prefer to use these facilities, such as gender non-conforming students,” the group said in an Instagram post.

The petition also states that not having gender-neutral bathrooms pushes students who want to use them to “miss large periods of instructional time” while they search for one.

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If Harvard agrees to work on these demands, it would be the latest step the university has taken to increase access to and awareness of gender-neutral bathrooms on campus.

Harvard is working on a $1 billion project to renovate twelve residential houses, part of which is to install gender-neutral bathrooms, the Crimson reported in 2016. The project is still being completed.

In addition to this, Harvard has a “Gender Inclusive Restroom Mapping Project” that provides the location of gender-neutral bathrooms on campus.

The petition acknowledges these things but says it is not enough.

Campus Reform contacted the HUQA, as well as other relevant sources, for comment. This story will be updated accordingly.