‘Poop Equality’: Students Hold ‘Sh*t-In’ at Public California University

Gender Neutral Restroom (Tony Talbot / AP)
Tony Talbot / Associated Press

The Queer Student Union at California Polytechnic University recently orchestrated a three-day “shit-in” at which students preached “Gender Diversity” and encouraged students to use solely gender-neutral bathrooms on campus.

“Put yourself in the shoes of a trans*/gender non-conforming student and take the pledge to use only all gender bathrooms,” a post from the organization’s Facebook page read.

Students reportedly created a staged toilet in the middle of campus, which students signed and decorated with several banners, one of which read “We’ve got shit to deal with,” according to images acquired by Campus Reform.

The group’s Facebook page is also circulating a petition that states that the publicly-funded university “has identified only five bathrooms that are reasonably accessible, leaving non-cisgender students with a paltry amount of options when it comes to using the bathroom.” It calls “on the university to establish more accessible all gender bathrooms, in addition to adding ‘Gender Diversity’ signs to existing gendered bathrooms.”

Despite having seventeen all-gender bathrooms in existence at Cal Poly, Campus Reform writes that flyers passed around during the “shit-in” called for the creation of new all-gender restrooms.

The online petition currently has 280 of 500 required signatures.

Not all who witnessed the transgender information dump were pleased with the outcome. “For many students, myself included, it’s hard to take something like a ‘shit-in’ very seriously,” Cal Poly senior Domenic Hjerpe told Campus Reform, detailing how “Cal Poly’s campus is already pretty extremely inclusive.”

West Hollywood passed a law this year requiring all single-stall bathrooms to replace gender-specific signs with gender-neutral signs, and San Diego Airport recently did the same thing by designating 12 restrooms as gender-neutral.

Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter @AdelleNaz

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