The Point: Article 19 is Worth the Fight
5/8/2025
This week’s Point is written by Professor Timothy Oleksiak from the Department of English, who has attended FSU bargaining sessions as a “silent bargaining rep” (which all members are encouraged to do!). Below, Professor Oleksiak addresses an FSU proposal that would require the university to provide all-gender restrooms on every floor of every building on campus. Although the Administration has engaged in such discussions, they have thus far been unwilling to commit to this proposal – one that would cost very little money to implement while providing easy access to bathrooms for all members of the campus community. Professor Oleksiak makes a case for why this commonsense proposal is worth fighting for.
On February 28, 2025 Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed a state law, the first in the United States, to remove gender identity as a protected class in the Iowa Civil Rights Act. Let’sBe clear about this: In Iowa you can be denied a loan, housing, and employment if you are or are believed to be transgender. Over at the federal level, our President has unambiguously made it unsafe for transgender, gender queer, butch cisgender women, and femme cisgender men in ways too numerous to count. To suggest that cruelty is the point seems a woeful understatement. Though there are spaces of trans joy and mutual aid, and though legal defense teams are working hard in our federal and state courts, it is increasingly more dangerous for trans people to live in this country.
This is important context for understanding FSU language for Article 19 which focuses on safe working conditions for all of us. Our FSU proposes the inclusion of the following in our contract: “To create safe and inclusive workspaces on campus, the University will provide all-gender restrooms and restrooms with changing stations on every floor of every building across campus.” This provision is worth including and worthy of our union’s attention.
At the bargaining session I attended in which this issue was discussed, the university provided a map to what they call “gender neutral bathrooms” that are also ADA compliant. I championed the circulation of this map in my own department and include it in my syllabi for all my students. Making this map and the locations of single-use bathrooms known is a practice of meaningful allyship for trans colleagues and students. It tells them that they don’t have to communicate or search for this information alone. Including it in my teaching resources also communicates that disclosure is not necessary for you to have access to safe spaces to do what humans do.
After listening to our FSU negotiators as a silent member on March 12, 2025, I have learned that this map is necessary but insufficient and cannot be acceptable given what our FSU has proposed. Insufficient, in part, because maps are not living documents. They cannot, for example, communicate if a single-stall bathroom is out of order, which is currently the case on the second floor of University Hall.
Here is the breakdown of the general locations of single-stall bathrooms on campus:
University Hall: 8 single-stall bathrooms in the entire building
Campus Center: 8 single stall bathrooms in the entire building
Wheatley Hall: 4 single-stall bathrooms in the entire building
Integrated Sciences Complex: 2 single-stall bathrooms in the entire building
Quinn and the Service and
Supply Building: 1 single-stall bathroom in the entire building
McCormack Hall: 1 single-stall bathroom in the entire building
Clark Athletic Center: 0 single-stall bathrooms in the entire building.
While administration may want us to celebrate this, we need the kind of agitation that our FSU bargaining team’s language brings.
Consider, for example, a student in McCormack taking a 50-minute class who chooses to use a gender-neutral bathroom. To enact this right, they must first do the research necessary to find if such a bathroom exists and then they must navigate their way to 002-01/00701U and hope that it is not occupied. And let’s assume that the student is being efficient with their time because they want to learn from the classroom community. The simple act of navigating our buildings is frustrating, especially to our newest students. With all this, how much time have they used? How much more time must they use than their cisgender counterparts? Now what if this student has a professor that distrusts them? A student needing a gender-neutral bathroom is up against more than their cisgender counterpart.
It need not be so.
Consider, for example, a faculty member with only 10 minutes between classes having to move from McCormack Hall to University Hall in time to teach. For folks that use larger, gendered bathrooms the path and the likelihood that they will not have to wait is clear. For folks making use of single-stall restrooms on campus the simple act of using a bathroom is made much more difficult. A colleague needing a gender-neutral bathroom is up against more than their cisgender counterpart.
It need not be so.
Our FSU has rightly situated their contract language on the article relating to safe working conditions. Our FSU’s proposal does not lay out a plan of action but one member offered a way forward. Offering such a way isn’t a detailed plan, but at the negotiating table helping management understand a way forward is a deft approach to creating better working conditions for all of us.
Signs on all UMass Boston campus bathrooms should not indicate gender but rather what is in the room. Do you need a stall or do you want a urinal? If this is our guiding question, and it must be, what then is needed? Three signs across campus:
- Single-stall
- Stalls only
- Stalls and urinals
In addition to ADA information such as braille or if there is a wheelchair accessible stall and sink, and information about the availability of changing tables. What’s in the room is more important when deciding to use the bathroom than what gender you have.
There are at least two reasons why the University would not act on this reasonable and simple requestion: cost and culture.
First, cost. Presumably, it would take financial resources to change all the signage on campus to align with the new value of “what’s in the room, not whose going into it.” This is a weak argument to support unwillingness to change. While we cannot ignore the matter of University spending, a quick search for bathroom signage suggests a modest cost overall. But even then, this cost is negligible compared to the impact it would have on “inclusive excellence.” We must not allow ourselves to understand the “health promoting” mission of the University as available for only some of our colleagues or students.
(In order to learn about the financial impacts on the University, I have emailed Facilities Management with two questions: how many bathrooms are on campus and how much is spent on signage. I am awaiting their answer).
Second, culture. This one is harder to respond to and reasonable people can disagree on the matter of gender-neutral bathrooms or the kinds of changes to signs that I suggest we make. Many of the arguments might come down to safety, broadly understood. Some folks might be concerned about violence in restrooms. There is nothing currently preventing that from happening to you. That violence in bathrooms rarely, if ever, happens in bathrooms is not a matter of the bathroom itself, it is the matter of a violent person breaking the law. A trans person using a bathroom is typically focused on using the bathroom. The fear of violence in bathrooms might feel real, but it does not empirically exist broadly enough to warrant such fear. And here’s where it gets more difficult to parse out. Your feelings of discomfort, as real as they may be for you, might be because being around people that aren’t like you or are unexpected is simply your reasonable reaction to a noticeable difference. Being around new and different experiences is very often uncomfortable.
If you are uncomfortable about the kinds of cultural shifts necessary to support all our community, you need to know that that discomfort you feel can diminish. Or, if your discomfort cannot diminish, you can find ways to manage that discomfort that allow for the kinds of changes to our campus culture I suggest we make. There are resources to help you work through this discomfort and there are folks within your social networks that can help you process negative feelings about such cultural shifts. In short, though it may feel real and uncomfortable, it does not need to remain that way.
Our discomfort should not be waged against trans people’s right to use the bathroom. The cultural shift from who can enter to what’s in the room might take a semester or two to adjust but we can adjust and adjust well. Our FSU’s proposal opens the door for such change/adjustment in support of the safety of all faculty, staff, and students.