My first article in The Wire was one about bathroom justice. It analyzed how public bathrooms are few and far between in most cities, and how when they do exist, they’re hardly ever accessible or maintained. I also broke down the genuine medical risks posed by holding in urinary and bowel movements, which range from kidney damage to increased risk of colon cancer, and all the life conditions that necessitate ready bathroom access.
Now, I’m here to cast a narrower net.
On campus, there are a few buildings that are open to Walla Walla’s community, namely Reid Campus Center, Penrose Library, Cleveland Commons and Jewett Cafe. While primarily resources for students, each building also has public restrooms. I went to each restroom in each of these buildings, and I’d like to report my findings to which is the most accessible place to use the toilet, and where each could be improved.
In my original article, I laid out criteria of what makes a toilet accessible. In essence, it is one that can accommodate as many kinds of people as possible. During the opening hours, at least, every building passes my first test (being free to use) with flying colors. Whitman doesn’t require visitors to pay in order to use its restrooms, meaning that anyone can walk in and have a restroom to use. There are also multiple free menstrual product dispensers in each building.
That’s great, it means that there’s already a baseline of access and each of these bathrooms is able to serve a greater number of people than if they weren’t. They’re also clean and well-maintained by the college’s wonderful team of custodial staff.
It’s a nice start, but being free and clean are the bare minimum — it’s just as important to consider other facets of accessibility. Of the four buildings that I visited, all of them had at least one all-gender bathroom. However, Penrose Library and Reid Campus Center both also have gender-segregated bathrooms on their main floors.
Penrose’s single all gender bathroom is tucked away on the fourth floor, and it takes the form of a one-stall room. That means in the entirety of Penrose Library, there is only room for one gender non-conforming person to safely use the toilet at a time. In a building that consistently houses more than one person at a time, there is a clear lack of access.
The all-gender bathrooms of Reid are found in the basement, and they take the form of two four-stall rooms, meaning there’s a possibility for more than one person to use them at a time. That’s a huge plus, but it is dampened by the fact that they’re in the basement and not advertised on the main floor.
Cleveland Commons and Jewett Cafe both only have all-gender restrooms, though Cleveland is the MVP by virtue of having more toilets available.
From a disability access viewpoint, none of the bathrooms stand out. All have larger accessible stalls available. Penrose’s setup is the least accessible, though, with doors leading to hallways leading to the door of each bathroom.
If I were to rank each building on the accessibility of their bathrooms, my last place would easily go to Penrose. Despite how much I like the building itself, its segregated bathrooms and two sets of doors are standard (in a bad way). It’s certainly not the worst public restroom in the world, but it is absolutely not the best.
Third place is Jewett Cafe. While I do appreciate the all-gender bathrooms and that they’re rooms (rather than the traditional stall), there are only four of them, and one room has a urinal instead of a toilet. They’re fairly easy to find, and it’s simple enough to access the actual stalls. That being said, there’s nothing really exceptional about the J-Caf bathrooms. Second place goes to Reid, which, while having gendered bathrooms, also has changing stations for parents. I don’t really have much else to say about it, but it’s fine enough.
My number one on this list is easily Cleveland Commons. It has lots of stalls, all of them are all-gendered, and there are two larger accessible stalls. From more of a comfort perspective, its rooms offer a better feeling of privacy than the traditional bathroom stall.
The bathrooms at Whitman are nowhere near the worst public ones I’ve seen in my life, by any stretch of the imagination. But we can’t settle for better than the worst, and being able to tell what makes a bathroom accessible or not is incredibly important.
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
