Photo courtesy of sophomore Karl Karsh.

  At San Luis Obispo High School, a significant population of students is transgender. The staff is doing a better job with accepting students and making sure the right name and pronouns are being used.

However, gender neutral bathroom access is very restricted.

  Recently, most of the gender neutral bathrooms around campus have been locked. This is because kids were vandalizing and vaping in them. Due to this, only staff is able to access these bathrooms, with the exception of the bathrooms in the Student Services building and behind the Band room. This is understandable. However, with most of the bathrooms being closed, transgender students are struggling. 

  For trans youth, having accessibility to gender neutral bathrooms is important. Not being able to have gender neutral bathrooms accessible is a serious problem. 

  “One day, during my PE class, I had to use the bathroom. I walked to the bathrooms by the portable classrooms and didn’t really think much of it. That was until I realized that the gender neutral bathroom was locked,” said sophomore Kyle Platte. “I had limited time, so I couldn’t walk across campus to another one. I chose to go into the mens room, assuming it would be empty. Two other boys walked in while I was in there, and though they didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, I felt extremely unsafe.” 

According to a May 6, 2019 CNN article, “Researchers looked at data from a survey of nearly 3,700 U.S. teens aged 13-17. The study found that 36% of transgender or gender-nonbinary students with restricted bathroom or locker room access reported being sexually assaulted in the last 12 months,”

  It can be extremely anxiety-inducing to go into a bathroom where one might have a fear of being yelled at or hate crimed. If the only bathrooms open are the gendered ones, students will sometimes go to the extent of avoiding drinking water and/or eating throughout the day, just so that they don’t have to worry about using the bathroom. This isn’t healthy. Not eating or drinking anything until 3 p.m. can really damage a kid’s wellbeing. 

More than half of transgender male teens who participated in a Human Rights Campaign survey reported attempting suicide in their lifetime, while 29.9 percent of transgender female teens said they attempted suicide. Among non-binary youth, 41.8 percent of respondents stated that they had attempted suicide at some point in their lives.

  Making the gender neutral bathrooms accessible helps alleviate these problems.

“The bathrooms being closed has been devastating for us. We don’t want them closed. Due to a few people choosing to participate in the [“Devious Licks”] trend, we’ve had to close down the bathrooms for renovation. We have a long list of what’s broken and needs to be fixed. I have no idea when the bathrooms will be usable again, it depends on what needs to be fixed,” said assistant principal Nathan Meinert.

Vandalism and vaping in school bathrooms will most likely continue to be a problem. Closing down most of the gender neutral bathrooms and making trans students pay for other people’s actions isn’t okay.

Administration, please continue to work on this problem.

Sources: hrc.org , hsph.harvard.edu/