Increasing all-gender washrooms on campus
June 16, 2023
Submitted on behalf of the Office of the Vice-President Finance and Operations and Equity and Human Rights.
A cross-campus wide project to increase all-gender washrooms is underway at the University of Victoria. Visit the new project website to learn more about current and upcoming renovations.
Project goals
Washrooms should be safe and accessible for everyone, regardless of gender. In 2019, UVic surveyed the university community on best practices and considerations when creating a campus-wide approach for inclusive washrooms. Following the report, project guidelines and principles were developed to guide both renovations to existing bathroom facilities and new building projects. The project has two goals:
- to ensure that every building on the UVic campus has an all-gender washroom, and then
- to increase the ratio of all-gender washrooms to single-gender washrooms in each building.
Since the report, work has been underway to retrofit washrooms in existing buildings and ensure all gender multi-stall washrooms are included in all new buildings. Currently, two renovations are in planning in Petch and Sedgewick A-Wing.
Work is also underway to convert gendered single-stall washrooms to all-gender washrooms in Maclaurin.
This project is being led by representatives from Facilities Management, Equity and Human Rights, Vice-President Finance & Operations, Student Affairs/Communications & Marketing, and Campus Planning & Sustainability. The work has also greatly benefited from consultation with members from the UVic Pride Collective and the Inclusive Washrooms Advisory Group.
A new website
Currently, because not every building on campus has an all-gender washroom some people must travel to another building to use a washroom that feels safe. For this reason, to reduce additional barriers, there needs to be a user-friendly map that locates these available washrooms on campus.
While before, a UVic Facilities webpage listed the location of all-gender washrooms and free menstrual products, the project team received feedback that led to the development and recent launch of a new centralized webpage. The new website addresses the accessibility concerns that were raised and is now screen reader friendly and includes a map for those who are less familiar with the building names on campus.
In addition to improving access, this page serves as a place to share project plans. Under Goal 4 Access and Support of the Equity Action Plan, UVic has committed to “Develop and release an inclusive washroom plan with timelines, locations and regular progress reports.” There is still work to do before this EAP action is complete, the next steps include developing a reporting plan for sharing renovation progress as the project advances towards its goals.