Campus-Based Sexuality
Six Community Action Projects resulted from Emily Kane's Fall Semester Sociology class, “Power, Privilege, and Inequality”, each project with the intent to benefit the Bates College Campus or the Lewiston-Auburn community in a unique way. Our group sought to achieve this goal by investigating and improving some aspect of campus-based sexuality. While brainstorming project ideas, an organization within the University of California, Santa Barbara called PISSAR (People In Search of Safe and Accessible Restrooms) was brought to our attention. This organization seeks to accommodate the needs of both disabled and genderqueer individuals by mapping the safe and accessible bathrooms on the UCSB campus. PISSAR recognizes that while everyone should be “Free to Pee”, there is a certain population of people who experience difficulties in using the bathroom.
We too thought that everyone should be “Free to Pee” and felt compelled to expose the issue to the Bates community, and so our group began to examine the level of disability accessibility and gender-neutrality present in Bates’ bathrooms. Over the course of the semester, we measured and assessed every bathroom on campus, from those in non-academic buildings to the tiny en-suites in the basement of Page and our results have been posted on the Outfront website (see link). In addition, our project has focused on educating the Bates community about the Transgender Day of Remembrance through a table in the library which will be set next week.
We've discovered through PISSAR that the issue of restroom rights and accessibility pervades many different parts of society. The inaccessibility (or lack) of unisex restrooms affects transgender persons in particular; society’s view of transgender persons in general causes them to struggle with a dual identity, whether they are pre or post surgery, or if the simply do not conform to traditional gender roles and choose to express themselves as "transsexual", or "two-spirited". In comparison to gay and lesbian rights, transgender rights are far behind. Although GLBTQ efforts link together these minorities, the transgender rights movement is also independent. This past semester, on November 20th, 2006, all those who were killed because of anti-transgender hatred were remembered by individuals across the country. The Transgender Day of Remembrance is held annually and is an integral part of our project and we intend on sharing more information about it at our table in the library during the coming week.
Accessibility has been an issue at Bates over the past decade. In the early 1990s, there
was a disability Short Term, where students became blind, deaf, or wheelchair/crutch-bound for five weeks. In the late 1990s, the then-director of physical plant began ramping a few buildings every summer. In the class of 1998, Shawn Draper became one of the first wheelchair-bound students to enroll in Bates. He did a lot of work to raise awareness of inaccessibility; such as protesting the Harvest Dinner one year, writing a letter to then-President Harward, and being featured in the Sun Journal and the Bates Student. In 2003, a wheelchair group attended the summer Dance Festival.
Please explore our website, which has accessibility information for every building on
campus as well as information on the PISSAR group, transgender issues, and other
information.
(http://abacus.bates.edu/people/orgs/outfront/restrooms.html)
Thank you,
Erin Reed
Phoebe Sullivan
Hope Fleming
Allison Marshall
Hero Fries
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