If you or someone you know has ruined at least half of their wardrobe because of their chosen medium of art, basked on the grassy knolls, or spent an obscene amount of money on art supplies that might be cancerous, you’re likely familiar with the 280 Building on Columbus Drive. It’s time to acknowledge the gender disparity in the bathrooms in the building and ask: Why are there still gendered bathrooms in 280?
A few weeks ago on an unusually hot day, during my trek to the 280 Building, I drank an obscene amount of water out of an irrational fear of getting heatstroke. I had only a few minutes before my comics class started, and I desperately needed to use the bathroom. Wanting to prove that it would be faster — and it was — I used the much closer men’s bathroom.
I wasn’t fazed by the urinal or the missing tampon dispenser on the wall, and no one pointed or chased me out. I was shocked by how clean and spacious it was. I had used the women’s bathrooms on the third floor for almost two years at that point. The ceilings in both women’s rooms are at a claustrophobic slant, like an extra room for your freshly orphaned cousin hastily put together in the attic. I had avoided the stalls closest to the wall like the plague because of how cramped they were, and awkwardly maneuvered around people washing their hands to reach them. Both women’s rooms have an ever-present lingering smell with new notes each time I visit.
No one cared where I went to the bathroom, and I returned to class. Nevertheless, I began racking my brain as to why. Why was it so much nicer? Was this bathroom cleaned more frequently because of the stereotype that men’s bathrooms are disgusting? Was this stereotype created to gatekeep the bathrooms? Will people go out of their way to use that bathroom after this article is published, no longer making it a clean bathroom? If so, will the women’s bathrooms finally have hair-free sinks?
On the third floor of the 280 Building, the women’s bathrooms are on opposite sides, by the figure drawing and painting classrooms, with the men’s bathroom in the middle by the comics classrooms. If you’re coming from a comics class, the two women’s bathrooms are at the end of a really long hallway that feels even longer if you have to pee. I know people who cut through classrooms with two entrances to get to the women’s restroom faster. (This is risky, especially if it’s during a painting class studying Caravaggio. It can get violent.)
The men’s bathroom is right next to a stairwell. If you can’t use it, there’s a gender-neutral bathroom near the staircase on the second floor that currently has one working stall. However, if it’s during lunch or dinner, that stall is most likely occupied and out of toilet paper. Of course, the reverse is also true: Men coming from the painting and figure drawing classrooms face a similarly long walk to reach the men’s restroom.
Neither is an ideal option. Another example of a “bathroom problem” is in the ceramics studio. The problem is that there is none. The bathroom situation is inconvenient for everyone.
Some students have expressed discomfort with gender-neutral bathrooms at SAIC. Many students feel unsafe sharing a bathroom. One student who used a gender-neutral bathroom told me they felt caught off-guard simply seeing a man leave without washing his hands. Even though stalls in the gender-neutral bathrooms go all the way to the floor, it can be jarring to know someone else can hear you pee, poop, use menstrual products, feel the effects of food poisoning, or all of the above at once. This shows the importance of having single-user bathrooms, like the gender-neutral bathrooms that everyone has in their homes.
The 280 Building, which was completed in 1973 and opened to students in 1976 (incredibly, the most recently built of all the non-residential buildings belonging to SAIC), appears to be designed so the bathrooms are only accessible to one gender. None of the bathrooms are in pairs. They are all relatively evenly spaced, but not by gender.
The 280 Building was designed by Chicago architect Walter Netsch and the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The architects who designed it were familiar with college campuses in Chicago since the 1950s. Netsch was known at the time for his avant-garde and controversial brutalist architecture, a prominent feature of the 280 Building.
The building was commissioned during a revitalization period for the school in 1970, before Title IX passed. Perhaps gender simply wasn’t considered in the design. Despite being a brand-new building in a time known as a turning point for feminism in academia, how big a leap is it to think that the restrooms were originally only meant to be used by men?
The “urinary leash” on women extended into public places, the workplace, and college campuses well into the 1990s. Women could only go to places where they knew they would have access to a bathroom. Many women could only visit close friends and family until the “potty parity” labor laws were passed nationally during the Progressive Era (1880s-1920s).
Nevertheless, male-dominated spaces, such as universities and government buildings, took longer to catch up. This gave us the white savior scene in “Hidden Figures” (2016), in which Kevin Costner declares, “We all pee the same color!” (Some of our pee is red, Kevin, we just have kidney failure.) Today, the comparable Capitalist Urinary Leash keeps people from using public gender-neutral bathrooms without first buying an $8 drink at Starbucks.
This seems ridiculous, comparing which gender has bathrooms closest to which department, and theorizing which gender takes more of which classes, when so much of SAIC’s student body is composed of people who do not conform to traditional gender norms. It is a privileged perspective to complain about not having access to my preferred bathroom in 280 Building, especially when many of my fellow students, some with mobility issues, have to go to the second floor for their preferred bathroom in a building with four floors.
All the bathrooms in the 280 Building should be converted to gender-neutral bathrooms. Why stop at 280? All the bathrooms at SAIC should be accessible to everyone, regardless of gender. Until that happens, I, an undergraduate student with no authority whatsoever, give permission to all students at SAIC to use the nearest, cleanest, and most accessible bathroom, washroom, and restroom, regardless of any characteristics they may have. Perhaps the institution will eventually catch on.
