All gender toilets in all academic TU Delft buildings

Work on building the all gender toilets on campus will start this year. Vice Rector Magnificus Rob Mudde announced this last week in his monthly meeting with the Student Council. He called it ‘good news’.

This view is shared by Student Council member and one of the initiators, Rutger Blijleven (Oras), who believes that as many people possible should feel comfortable on campus. “This is one of many steps that we need to take.”

Academic buildings
Not all the toilets on campus will be converted into all gender toilets. “One existing block of toilets in all the academic buildings on campus will be replaced by a gender neutral toilet block,” explains Blijleven. “This will be phased in and will take a few years.” Which building will be the first to have all gender toilets is still to be decided.

However, office buildings such as the ESA building (30A) will not get gender neutral toilets. “This is because of the current Labour Laws,” explains Blijleven. These require toilets to be separated by sex. This law applies to operational spaces such as the offices and laboratories on campus.

In the future, neutral toilet groups will be a standard part of new academic buildings. This, however, comes too late for Echo (in Dutch). The new academic building behind the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences will be occupied after the summer and will have no all gender toilets.

Inclusive university
Student Council member Blijleven is happy with the decisive action of the Executive Board. “We started picking up clear signals about the need for all gender toilets. We then signalled this to the Executive Board and the building and renovation work will already start in a couple of months’ time.”

He says that the Executive Board is ‘very aware’ of the fact that the campus is not yet a safe place for everybody. “TU Delft’s Code of Conduct says that it strives to be as inclusive possible. The all gender toilets will certainly help.”

• The all gender toilets were initiated by Rutger Blijleven (Oras) and Julian van Dijk (Lijst Bèta).