Some of the same-sex couples swept in wearing ostentatious designs. Others wore simple jeans and T-shirts to the event for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered students, details from Pennlive.com.
Jonathan Ontiberos hurried across the floor to take care of a last detail.
He taped signs, hastily printed on yellow sheets, over the words “Men” and “Women” on restroom doors. Signs stated, “This is an all-gender bathroom.”
As president of Dickinson’s Spectrum Club for LGBT students, Ontiberos wanted students to be comfortable. They could change clothes, put on a bit of lip gloss or just use the facilities without confronting an example of society’s disregard for their needs.
Soon, he won’t have to bother with temporary signs. The Carlisle campus is permanently converting some bathrooms across campus for unisex use. Single-stall restrooms that were designated “Men” or “Women” will sport the international unisex sign showing both a man and a woman.
The private college is among the first in the midstate to make gender-neutral restrooms available for LGBT staff and students.
However, schools across the country are responding to students’ sexual orientation and gender identity by adjusting traditional health, safety and social services.
Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi’s suicide, after a roommate allegedly covertly videotaped intimate moments he shared with another student, riveted national attention on the issue.
Campus Pride has been looking at acceptance and accommodation for LGBT people at U.S. private and public colleges and universities since 2001. The national nonprofit offers an alternative to rankings in the yearly Princeton Review, which Campus Pride refutes. Princeton’s list of LGBT-friendly colleges is extracted from answers to a question about campus climate, Pride claims, not services for LGBT students.
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