Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) tonight voted to renew its commitment to pushing for accessible gender neutral bathrooms at College events.
The union voted unanimously at council to renew a motion originally enacted in December 2016. It was proposed by TCDSU Gender Equality Officer Ryan Carey.
“I would urge you all to support this motion so that everyone can pee”, he said.
Carey originally proposed the motion at the union’s last council, but withdrew it after a member of council pointed out that many of the bathrooms are not always accessible, even when they’re available.
No one spoke in opposition to Carey’s motion, which will see the union’s LGBT rights officer work with its president to push to make gender neutral bathrooms available in all College buildings.
It also mandates the union to make sure gender neutral bathrooms are available at its events.
Carey, a final-year history student, is running for president in February’s TCDSU elections. He is the founder and chair of Trinity’s Rover Scout Society. He previously served as faculty convenor for the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
Carey is running against Eoin Hand, the director of campus acapella group Trinitones, and Harry Williams, the tour secretary of Dublin University Hockey Club and a former project leader with social entrepreneurship society Enactus.
In September 2019, Trinity introduced an option to allow students to pick gender neutral pronouns in official College records, marking a significant expansion to its gender recognition policies.
Students will be addressed by their first name in College letters and emails, marking a change from a system that currently addresses all students as either Mr or Ms.
Speaking to The University Times in September, Trinity’s Director of Diversity and Inclusion Tony McMahon said that the changes put College “ahead of the curve” in its approach to gender recognition.
“Our Academic Registry was the first to say: ‘Look, we can recognise [your gender identity] in so far as possible – and there are some limitations – without you having formally changed your identity’”, he said.
