All-gender restrooms on the Stockton and Mountain House campuses have received new renovations focusing on student safety and security after a collaboration with the Delta College Pride Coalition (DCPC).
During a Board meeting on Sept. 5, Stacy Pinola, director of facilities management and operations, and Augustine Chavez, vice president of administrative services, gave a presentation about the changes, which include three different phases for the restrooms starting in Fall 2023 and going through Fall 2024.
These changes come with new signage, security cameras and redesigns of the six all-gender restrooms on campus, with one in Mountain House. New bright red signs can be seen on the first floor of Shima, second floor of Danner, the South Campus (Mountain House) and Forum.
During a campus climate survey presented in the presentation, 25 percent of students who were unsure of their identity felt unsafe in restrooms on campus, which is more than 14 percent of students in Delta College.
“The number one concern for me was safety, visibility and access,” Professor of Photography and Co-President of DCPC Kirstyn Russell said. “We wanted students to feel safe going into the bathrooms, as there were a lot of students who didn’t feel safe and a lot of incidents that had happened and so we were looking at strategies around making sure people felt safe going into the bathrooms.”
The Campus Climate Survey, administered in Spring 2023, noted that “when it came to feelings of safety, students in the LGBTQ+ focus group tied their feelings of safety to their identity. Students in the focus groups shared how they had experienced loud, offensive comments in public spaces and do not feel safe or comfortable defending themselves.” Students said “they had experienced or witnessed discrimination — in person and online — based on sexuality or gender identity/expression.”
For safety concerns, a camera was placed by Shima 101 overlooking the Shima all-gender restroom, along with a camera by the Forum all-gender restroom.
“Recently, the District Police Department placed a camera in the first floor of the Shima building to enhance safety within the Shima building,” Public Information Officer for Police Services Jim Bock said. “It became operational during the last week of July. The camera in the lower level of the Forum building went operational during the first week of September.”
DCPC is a group of Delta employees looking to create a safe environment for students on campus.
“We are a group of Delta employees and that includes staff, faculty, and managers, that identify within the LGBTQ+ community we work together to create safer policies and just keeping the students in mind at all times, specifically our LGBTQ+ students,” Digital Media Multimedia Lab Tech Leo Marquez said.
The urinals in the all-gender restroom on the first floor of Shima were removed due to a new concept design: fully enclosed stalls. These stall doors travel from the ceiling to the floor with four stalls in the bathrooms for multiple people to use according to Pinola during her board presentation.
With phase one for the all-gender restrooms already done, phase two starts in Spring 2024 with hopes that the redesign will be 50 percent completed with potential panic buttons which are currently in development by Delta Police. Phase three, which starts in Fall 2024, will have 100 percent completed all-gender restrooms.
“The first bathrooms were installed in 2016. That was because of the law that they have to be put in,” Russell said, pointing out how there are more transgender and non-binary students than there were 10-15 years ago. “I’m really excited that Delta is finally stepping up to do more than just the bare minimum.”