As part of a new policy for transgender and gender-fluid students and employees, University College Dublin (UCD) has announced that it will redesignate over 170 toilets as gender neutral, as well as introducing transgender changing facilities in its sports centre.
The policy will also allow students to change their names on official university documents without producing a gender recognition certificate.
Launched today by Minister for Children Katherine Zappone, UCD is due to start the process of changing the spaces to become gender neutral in the coming weeks.
In a joint email statement to The University Times, University College Dublin Students’ Union (UCDSU) President Barry Murphy and Welfare Officer Eoghan Mac Domhnaill said that the union “wholeheartedly welcomes” the changes.
“This serves as a reminder that UCD is an equal, diverse and inclusive campus which values all its students no matter what gender they may identify as and will afford each student the same opportunities as the next.”
The officers thanked everyone who had been involved in the process, including “years of lobbying” by previous UCDSU sabbatical officers.
Bathrooms are expected to be denoted by symbols depicting a male, a female and a figure where one side is male and the other female. In the sports centre, the multi-stall changing facilities will allow transgender people to choose the facilities that correspond with how they identify.
Many colleges, including Trinity, have re-designated bathrooms as gender neutral. In November of last year, Trinity also announced that it would change the term “freshman” to the gender neutral “fresh” to be more inclusive.
The decision to allow students in UCD to change their name on official university documents follows a similar set-up in Trinity which was launched in December 2016. Transgender, non-binary and intersex students are allowed to change their name and gender on College records without providing official documentation for the change. This allows students to change their personal data on all College portals including their ID card, Blackboard account, their name on class lists and their graduation certificate.
