LSU adding gender neutral bathrooms and housing to accommodate transgenders

LSU's gender neutral bathrooms

LSU's gender neutral housing



"We do have several gender-neutral bathrooms on campus right now, and (we're) working to add more," said Derrick Rovaris, vice provost for diversity at LSU. The problem (is) students are concerned that there are not enough gender-neutral bathrooms and they have to go a little ways to get to one."

quote:

---

At LSU's Business Education Complex, the third-floor women's restroom was recently changed to a family restroom after Peter Jenkins, a business graduate student and LGBT advocate, requested the change to accommodate transgender students.

"For a lot of people who don't understand or don't focus on gender identity very much, I look like a guy in a dress, and if they see me in the restroom, people get really upset sometimes," Jenkins told the Daily Reveille, LSU's student-run newspaper. "Transgender people have one of the highest rates of being murdered of any group of people, and for me it is a safety issue."

---

quote:

---

"A no vote today will help assure that the children of Baton Rouge will not face the same indignities that were faced by the freshman girls in Florence High School in Florence, California, who were subjected to the indignity of a young teenage boy in their restroom -- in their girl's bathroom," said Fran White during the debate at the meeting. "The shocked and offended parents were stunned even further when they brought that to the attention of the administration who then replied that the rights of that self-proclaimed transgendered teenager triumphed their daughters rights to privacy in the girl's bathroom."

Transgender individuals using women's facilities have recently made national headlines, Most recently, Planet Fitness canceled the gym membership of a woman after she complained about a man, who identifies as a woman, using the female locker room.

Yvette Cormier, of Midland County, Michigan, said when she entered the women's locker room at the Planet Fitness, she was "freaked out" after seeing a man in there, according to Mlive.com. Cormier said an employee at the front desk told her that the individual identifies as a woman.

After taking her complaints to Planet Fitness' corporate office, Cormier said she was told that the gym was a "no judgment zone" and they would not tell the individual in question to stay out of the women's locker room

---