The Associated Students of San Diego State University have passed Council Bill F03-05, “Resolution in Support of Gender Neutral/Family Restrooms.” The resolution provides for gender-neutral restrooms across the campus for transgender students as well as parents with opposite-sex children. Ben Cartwright, president of the LGBT Student Union proposed the legislation, which was authored and brought before the AS Council by Scott Pietka, the LGBTSU’s liaison to the council.

“In the last two years we’ve realized that we have the ‘T’ in our name but we haven’t really done anything or focused on that,” Cartwright told the Gay and Lesbian Times. “We had a grad student about four years ago write a 30-page thesis on the exclusion she felt from our group being a transgender person and that really affected us and we really wanted to do something.”

The vote was unanimous among the council, but had to pass through two subcommittees before being put to a council-wide vote. While the facilities board, which oversees facilities changes in the Student Union, passed it unanimously, the university affairs board turned it down.

“We honestly don’t know why they turned it down,” Cartwright said. “We actually didn’t want to know. That was our only opposition, believe it or not.”

The United States Student Association, the nation’s largest student association, has urged all college and universities to provide gender neutral restrooms for transgender students, to protect them from harassment and physical attacks. Questions about which restroom to use raises concerns for transgender students.

“In general, depending on how well a person does or does not pass, it can be [difficult] at times, where they are perceived as one gender but they may be really expressing or feeling a different gender,” said Amanda Nicole Watson, co-chair of the San Diego Transgender Coalition. “When I first started transitioning I was at a local department store and I wasn’t allowed to use either bathroom. The girls thought I looked too much like a boy and the gentlemen in the men’s department thought I looked too much like a girl. I went to a different department store that had a unisex bathroom, which is basically what San Diego State is doing.”

Currently there are no active transgender members of San Diego State’s LGBTSU, but Cartwright hopes that as the organization continues to embrace and take up transgender issues they will participate more in the organization.

“There are quite a few transgender students and faculty on campus,” Cartwright said. “That has been one of our difficulties, getting them to join us. I can honestly tell you that there weren’t any this semester, but we are trying to reach out to that community and make them know that they are welcome.”

The first phase of the resolution will be to convert a set of male/female restrooms in SDSU’s student Union building, the Aztec Center, into gender-neutral facilities. This will include changing the door signs to read Male/Female, placing locks on the doors, and adding diaper changing tables. The first part of the project, paid for by the Associated Students, will cost about $2400. Not only will these facilities benefit transgender students, faculty/staff, and visitors, but also parents with young, opposite-sex children.