Post updated at 4:20 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 26:
Nearly 75 students gathered Wednesday in front of Strong Hall, which houses top administrators on KU’s campus, to protest the university removing gender-inclusive assignments and restrooms in Grace Pearson Scholarship Hall.
Grace Pearson has provided gender-inclusive community-style bathrooms and gender-inclusive room assignments for years. But earlier this month, hall residents received an email from KU Housing & Residence Life saying it was nixing gender-inclusive assignments in the upcoming school year.
Tomorrow is the yearly room assignment meeting, where students will pick their rooms for next year. That’s left many of them with a dilemma of staying in the hall without gender-inclusive assignments or leaving.
Based on signs at the protest that read “Not binary, not leaving” and “No to preemptive compliance,” many students are resolute about staying at Grace Pearson.
“That’s our home,” said Cael Bryant, a KU student and GP resident. “A lot of us have lived there for years. I know a lot of us haven’t really felt nearly as safe in any other place we’ve lived.”
Bryant said they gathered Wednesday to help spread awareness to others across campus. The protest was met with routine honks of support from cars and buses passing by. Bryant said they worry the shift at Grace Pearson could usher in other actions across campus.
Kristopher Long is in his third year living at Grace Pearson and is vice president of the hall. He said students spent the last two weeks attempting to work with campus administrators but didn’t receive a response. The protest, he said, was the students deciding to take matters into their own hands.
KU spokesperson Erinn Barcomb-Peterson said the university needed to be in compliance with the International Building Code. An email from the KU housing department to residents of Grace Pearson said “multi-stalled bathrooms in residential dormitory buildings are required by International Building Code (IBC Chapter 29, 2902.2) to have separate facilities provided by sex.” The email refers to the 2018 IBC.
The 2024 IBC, though, includes language about multiple-user facilities “designed to serve all genders.”
“KU Housing will continue to support its residents in navigating this change to meet their housing needs,” Barcomb-Peterson said.
On Feb. 19, the KU Student Senate passed a resolution asking the university to reverse the decision.
“It’s been very stressful for us because people don’t know what their housing situation is gonna look like,” Long said. “But at the same time, it’s been a sense of solidarity that’s really reassuring.”
Students at the protest weren’t all GP residents, with members of other scholarship halls showing up to support. One student led the group in song with a guitar while others led chants, decorated signs and put on face paint.
Valerie Metzler, community engagement chair of Lawrence Pride, said Lawrence Pride “came out to support this important movement.”
The change also comes after the U.S. Department of Education reaffirmed Trump’s Title IX rules and a judge tossed out Biden’s rules that extended sex discrimination protections to include gender identity.
Students have launched a petition, gathering more than 1,000 signatures, according to Bryant.
The email from KU said residents would have the option to remain in GP for the upcoming academic year, but will be forced to select a room assignment of male or female.
Rooming will coordinate with students’ housing portal information, meaning if a transgender student hasn’t pursued a gender marker change and their KU information has not been updated, then they will have to choose a living assignment that aligns with what is on their KU records. Options for nonbinary and other gender-diverse students are unclear.
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Cuyler Dunn (he/him), a contributor to The Lawrence Times since April 2022, is a student at the University of Kansas School of Journalism. He is a graduate of Lawrence High School where he was the editor-in-chief of the school’s newspaper, The Budget, and was named the 2022 Kansas High School Journalist of the Year. Read his complete bio here. Read more of his work for the Times here.
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