Izzy Poole
Business Manager
“We certainly want to make our high school a place where students feel valued and all the different experiences a student can have.” principal Dr. Matt Irvin said.
As it becomes more socially acceptable to come out as non-binary, trans or anything other than cisgender, the need for gender neutral bathrooms grows. The school does have gender neutral bathrooms in the drama department, library, music hallway, SSD department nurse and FACs, but not all students know of every single one.
“The only gender neutral bathroom I know of is the one in the drama hallway, but it’s always unkept and gross and in the band hallway”. junior Ceci Likos said.
The school has many gendered bathrooms so all students have the option to use which bathroom they feel comfortable using.
“Just teach people about the fact that there are trans people. As a trans person I went into the male bathroom once and never gone into that one again because there was a cis male in there, and he called me the t slur for using that bathroom, so I don’t really feel comfortable, using that bathroom,” freshman Maloy Gordon said.
Students have brought up this issue to the administration, it has started to take action.
“Earlier this year another administrator and I met with students about concerns about our bathroom access. I would say it’s in progress, so part of that is we’ve got some parts in our building that are more accommodating for single stall restrooms and some parts that aren’t. I went through the building earlier with some district level people to look at those options, and I think we’ve landed on one option of transitioning some settings a little bit, but at this point there would have to be some signage change, some locks etc, so we’re in process with that right now,” Irvin said.
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Izzy Poole – Business ManagerThis will be Izzy Poole’s first year on ECHO staff, but they made several contributions while taking journalism class their sophomore year. |
