Restroom Fairness and Practicality

Concerning the note in the February issue on dorm restrooms (On the Campus), it makes sense that a large majority of students voted in favor of making the restrooms gender neutral. Not only is it fairer to trans and nonbinary students, but given Princeton’s old dorms with their separate entrances, gender-neutral restrooms are better for everyone so long as the restrooms provide adequate privacy, such as doors on stalls and showers, rather than the flimsy curtains that the dorm restrooms used to have.

In those dorms, there is usually only one restroom for a floor or entryway and it’s more convenient if all students on the hall can use that restroom. In my freshman year, I and the three other women on the third floor in the third entryway of Foulke decided that we didn’t want to have to go downstairs to wash up or use the bathroom, so we de facto integrated the men’s bathroom on our floor and used it for all purposes other than showers.