MATHEW SHAW | Contributing Writer
MathewSyb@gmail.com
Starting next fall, the University of Texas at Arlington will include all-gender restrooms in several of its buildings after the school’s Student Senate passed a resolution to update existing restrooms on campus.
Resolution 25-03, the “Unicorn Inclusion Act,” passed at a Student Senate general body meeting on April 1. Eleven voted in favor of the resolution, while two voted against it, and eight abstained. For now, the resolution will affect restrooms in the social work and Smart Hospital buildings, but it could impact restrooms across campus in the future, according to Katie Pham, UTA Queer Social Work Association president.
“I think that [gender-inclusive restrooms] are important because having a restroom like that should be a basic human right,” Pham said. “Just considering that UTA would pride itself on having such diversity in its students, I think it’s very important to show students that they’re accepted in a way.”
Elwim Sorto, a UTA social work grad student and Queer Social Work Association CEO, drafted the resolution last September. He explained that the term “gender inclusive” reflects the diversity of the student body more so than the term “gender neutral” does.
“When we say gender neutral, a lot of the times it has an icon of a stereotypical woman and then a stereotypical man,” he said. “That doesn’t necessarily leave room for all the other genders.
“What about people who are agender, nonbinary, in transitions?” Sorto asked. “It kind of comes back to the social concept of what male and female look like. And so having the keyword ‘all gender’ would just be more encompassing of all gender identities.”
Sorto added that the icon for all-gender restrooms would be a toilet instead of a male or female figure.
The approximately 25 gender neutral restrooms on campus will be updated to all gender, while the male and female restrooms in the historic parts of campus will remain the same, Sorto explained.
This resolution comes at a time when UTA is restructuring its outreach toward LGBTQ students in compliance with Senate Bill 17, a measure passed by the Texas Legislature in 2023 which banned diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts on university campuses.
UTA’s LGBTQ Program disbanded due to that state law in 2023, which is when Sorto started attending. Events that the program used to sponsor, such as a drag show, have ended after the chair of the University of Texas System’s governing board annouced last month that UT campuses would no longer host drag shows.
Republican Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare sent a letter to the board asking for the ban, calling drag shows “sexually oriented events,” according to a KERA News article.
In his letter, O’Hare stated that because the UT System received federal funding, banning drag shows would help it comply with Donald Trump’s executive order stating that federal funds would not be used to “promote gender ideology.”
Sorto said that the DEI ban has been hard on his organization, leaving them facing everything from receiving pushback from upper administration to meetings about how they should go about things.
“I honestly think it’s a type of censoring because it lowers the voices of queer students,” he stated. “And a lot of the times the faculty are scared because they work for the state government. The admin are critics. The state government are critics. We’re just trying to do something over here.”
In his social work advocacy, Sorto said he wanted to concentrate on transgender and gender nonconforming people.
“I think now more than ever there’s this attack and pending legislation to go ahead and say that ‘transgenderism’ is not necessarily an identity, and it could be criminalized,” he said.
“Just the statistics that this marginalized group of people have, they’re so excluded from society that they really need to be championed so they can go ahead and have recognition.”
Last month, Republican state Rep. Tom Oliverson filed a bill that would make it illegal to identify as trans on official documents, potentially leading to jail time. Although the bill is unlikely to pass because it has no co-sponsors, according to NBC News, it came at the same time another Republican filed an anti-trans bill that would criminalize healthcare providers from providing gender-affirming care even for adults.
“These individuals make up less or around 1 percent of the U.S. population and I feel like the way society treats them is just extremely specific bullying,” Sorto declared. “And as part of the LGBTQ+ population, I think about when I was little, being isolated, and so I can’t imagine being isolated and not liking who I am or society telling me who to identify as.
“We need people who are interested, people like me, to go ahead and advocate for these individuals.”