Dear Members of the UMBC Community,
As a campus community that is committed to inclusion and diversity, one of our shared values is having respect for the dignity of every member of our UMBC community. All members of our community and visitors to our campus should have access to safe restroom facilities that are configured and located in such a manner that no one has to be late to class, meetings, or campus events or to walk long distances across campus to find a restroom. Now is the time when we must put our values into action by moving forward on our commitment to making all-gender restroom facilities more widely available at UMBC.
In collaboration with the University Steering Committee and an All-Gender Restroom Steering Committee that will be comprised of students, faculty, and staff, including representatives from UMBC’s LGBTQ community, campus leadership will develop guidelines and implementation plans for moving towards this goal. These guidelines and implementation plans will apply to conversion of existing facilities, renovations, and new construction. This consultation process and resulting actions will enable us to move forward with appropriate rapidity, understanding that we will learn as we go and make adjustments as needed, to ensure that these changes meet the needs of our campus community.
In 2018, we completed designating all single-user restrooms on campus as all-gender restrooms. Currently there are 41 single-user all-gender restrooms in administration, academic, and student life facilities open to students and visitors, 16 single-user all-gender restrooms adjacent to shared areas in residence halls, and additional single-user all-gender restrooms located in buildings or areas of buildings not typically open to the public. A map highlighting public all-gender restrooms is available here. In addition, UMBC Facilities Management is continuing efforts to add more single-user all-gender restrooms in the University Center and the Retriever Learning Center in the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery. And the new Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building, which is scheduled to open in time for the Fall 2019 semester, will have one single-user and two multi-user all gender restrooms.
Our next step will be to expand the availability of all-gender restrooms by identifying opportunities to designate existing multi-user restrooms as all-gender restrooms in campus buildings that currently lack single-user all-gender restrooms. Beginning this semester, we will develop initial guidelines to designate a small number of multi-user restrooms as all-gender restrooms. These guidelines and related implementation plans will serve as the starting point for assessing the best process for moving forward with this important effort.
We are committed to making all-gender restrooms available across our campus. We invite you to provide input or ask questions. If you would like to volunteer to be part of the process, please contact the All-Gender Restroom Steering Committee at agr@umbc.edu.
President Freeman Hrabowski and Provost Philip Rous
As a campus community that is committed to inclusion and diversity, one of our shared values is having respect for the dignity of every member of our UMBC community. All members of our community and visitors to our campus should have access to safe restroom facilities that are configured and located in such a manner that no one has to be late to class, meetings, or campus events or to walk long distances across campus to find a restroom. Now is the time when we must put our values into action by moving forward on our commitment to making all-gender restroom facilities more widely available at UMBC.
In collaboration with the University Steering Committee and an All-Gender Restroom Steering Committee that will be comprised of students, faculty, and staff, including representatives from UMBC’s LGBTQ community, campus leadership will develop guidelines and implementation plans for moving towards this goal. These guidelines and implementation plans will apply to conversion of existing facilities, renovations, and new construction. This consultation process and resulting actions will enable us to move forward with appropriate rapidity, understanding that we will learn as we go and make adjustments as needed, to ensure that these changes meet the needs of our campus community.
In 2018, we completed designating all single-user restrooms on campus as all-gender restrooms. Currently there are 41 single-user all-gender restrooms in administration, academic, and student life facilities open to students and visitors, 16 single-user all-gender restrooms adjacent to shared areas in residence halls, and additional single-user all-gender restrooms located in buildings or areas of buildings not typically open to the public. A map highlighting public all-gender restrooms is available here. In addition, UMBC Facilities Management is continuing efforts to add more single-user all-gender restrooms in the University Center and the Retriever Learning Center in the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery. And the new Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building, which is scheduled to open in time for the Fall 2019 semester, will have one single-user and two multi-user all gender restrooms.
Our next step will be to expand the availability of all-gender restrooms by identifying opportunities to designate existing multi-user restrooms as all-gender restrooms in campus buildings that currently lack single-user all-gender restrooms. Beginning this semester, we will develop initial guidelines to designate a small number of multi-user restrooms as all-gender restrooms. These guidelines and related implementation plans will serve as the starting point for assessing the best process for moving forward with this important effort.
We are committed to making all-gender restrooms available across our campus. We invite you to provide input or ask questions. If you would like to volunteer to be part of the process, please contact the All-Gender Restroom Steering Committee at agr@umbc.edu.
President Freeman Hrabowski and Provost Philip Rous