Grinnell College hopes to begin construction on gender-neutral bathrooms in Noyce Science Center in early 2026 after years of campaigns from transgender students through Trans at Grinnell (TAG).
In an email to The S&B, Assistant Vice President for Facilities Management Rick Whitney wrote that the College asked designers to renovate the first-floor bathrooms into gender-neutral bathrooms. Whitney added that there is potential to add a gender-neutral bathroom on the third floor as well.
“These projects may be completed in phases or combined into a single effort, so the exact timeline for each restroom is still uncertain,” Whitney wrote. “The first phase of construction could begin as early as 2026, likely during a break period.”
Whitney wrote that the cost of the project will be unknown until the design is finished. Trans at Grinnell leaders Sam Wilson `26 and Kiera Rennick `26 said that they were quoted an estimated cost of $800,000 in a meeting with President Anne Harris.
“It’s not just for the benefit of trans students,” Wilson wrote. “It helps every student who walks into Noyce and has to pee. It’s an investment in the College’s future.”
Currently, the Humanities and Social Sciences Center and Bucksbaum Arts Center are the only academic buildings with gender neutral bathrooms. The College installed gender-neutral bathrooms in the Joe Rosenfield `25 Center in 2019.
“The advocacy for gender-neutral bathrooms has been a priority in Trans at Grinnell for a really long time, since we were first-years,” Rennick said. “What we were told the first year was that previous students had asked about gender-neutral restrooms in Noyce, but building code regulations were standing in the way.”
In Wilson and Rennick’s second year, Trans at Grinnell placed signs on Noyce bathrooms in the basement, first and second floor that read “gender-neutral,” which Trans at Grinnell had previously done in the JRC.
“Regardless of where people stood on the spectrum of being supportive of it or not being supportive of it, it was very present,” Rennick said. “You couldn’t go into Noyce and use the bathroom without encountering it.”
Rennick and Wilson said that the signs hoped to spread awareness about the need for gender-neutral bathrooms.
“Trans students don’t have the option to not interact with their gender in the bathroom,” Wilson said. “Everybody has to go to the bathroom and trans people have to figure out how to do that safely and in their comfort levels. Regardless of the amount of discomfort it [the signs] brought to other students, that is temporary discomfort that they only had to live with for the duration of that collective action.”
Rennick and Wilson said that it is essential for students to feel safe and comfortable using the bathroom.
“Highlighting this in the perspective of anti-trans legislation happening, if either of us walk into a bathroom and don’t look cis enough, there may be students who feel like it’s okay to comment on that or to be violent, or take some kind of action,” Rennick said.
“Regardless of the likelihood, it’s still a very real fear,” Wilson said.
Rennick and Wilson said they also do not want to make other students using the bathrooms uncomfortable.
“I’m not a trans woman,” Rennick said. “I shouldn’t be in women’s spaces. … Gender-neutral bathrooms just provide a lot of options for anyone who, for some reason, might not be comfortable being in a men’s or a women’s bathroom.”
“Having the option of gender neutral bathrooms harms nobody and helps everybody,” Wilson said.
