Student activists at the University of North Carolina are hopping mad over the university’s decision to replace their all-gender-inclusive bathroom signs with more mundane ones that comply with federal guidelines. The new signs, the students complain, are not inclusive enough.
“I think people will look at the new signs and think they look similar because you can still use the bathroom whether you’re male or female in accordance with the new signs. But it blatantly excludes people that don’t conform to gender binaries,” student Regan Buchanan told the Daily Tarheel.
“Our old signs didn’t do that. They were inclusive of all gender identities and expressions,” she said.
A university spokesman tells the student paper that the signs at the Campus Y, described as a “safe space” for transgender students, were replaced as part of an effort to change the signage on 150 gender-neutral and single-stall bathrooms across the campus. The new signs feature universally recognized stick-figure symbols for males and females and are necessary because of the large number of international visitors to campus, the spokesman said.
The earlier signs, placed by students at the Campus Y in 2013, featured a mashed-up pictogram of the symbols for male and female derived from astrology that are not as well-known as the stick figures.
The students complaining about the new signs described the university’s actions as “hurtful” and an “attack” on their safe space. Brennan Lewis, a board member of Sexuality and Gender Alliance, said he was surprised and angered by the university’s actions.“It’s framed in a way where UNC looks like they’re saying either trans people don’t exist or trans people don’t have our support,” Lewis said. “It makes me feel like I don’t have safe spaces on campus and don’t have the support of the university.”
Other activists from the Campus Y were not so diplomatic on Twitter.