When the school district failed to grant access to gender-neutral bathrooms, Berkeley High students formed the Gender Expansive Youth Activist group and replaced some gendered bathroom signs with gender-neutral ones.
Every school in the district has at least 1 gender-neutral restroom. But these bathrooms are usually locked, or broken, or the stalls are trashed or vandalized and not being a safe place. If they are being locked, gender-expansive students don’t have a place to go to the bathroom and sometimes the bathrooms are in a completely different building resulting in just not going to the bathroom, which can cause health problems, not going to school at all, or having to walk over to the gender-neutral one, but with the risk of being caught by security or staff for not being in the right building. Clubs and activist groups in Berkeley High School have been advocating for these safe spaces.
“Bathrooms are a human right. That is, accessible bathrooms with working sinks and toilets, with stalls that lock, with fully stocked menstrual products. Most Berkeley High restrooms fail to meet these requirements,” students in a newly formed Gender Expansive Youth Activists group wrote in a statement explaining the protest. They put new gender-neutral signs on six second-floor bathrooms.
A student hangs a gender-neutral bathroom sign over a gendered bathroom sign at Berkeley High. Credit: Gender Expansive Youth Activists.
