ZIS Bathrooms: What’s Wrong?
The middle school at ZIS has 310 students which are crammed into a historic villa. The school has rented the Spinnergut Villa for many years, a building which is more than 100 years old. There will be a new and improved building that will benefit multiple students in August 2022. ZIS values being inclusive. The middle school has a SAGA (Sexuality And Gender Alliance) club, an eco-friendly club, and multiple clubs and lessons about being inclusive of others. So what’s the problem? ZIS middle school has 2 types of bathrooms; girl and boy (if you don’t count the staff one). This causes issues to people who feel as if they are neither girl or boy, and/or people in wheelchairs who need a special wheelchair bathroom. For such an inclusive school the bathrooms really don’t match.
Neutral Bathrooms
Although it would make sense to not have a *gender-nonconforming bathroom 30 years ago, why doesn’t the school have a neutral bathroom now? A good reason could be that we are moving into a new school in less than a year. Well, why wait to change the bathrooms when there are the possibilities to change them now. I have noticed that not a lot of people use the bathrooms near the cafeteria. This bathroom could become a neutral bathroom, but if that’s too big of a sacrifice why not make the one-person staff bathroom both staff and neutral? According to a survey I sent out, 42% of the 110 survey respondents have said that there should be feminine hygiene products in the boys’ bathroom, this implies that there is an audience for a neutral bathroom considering that most people who support transgender people will most likely support neutral bathrooms. After all, 8 out of the 110 students surveyed identify as *non-binary.
8 out of the 110 students surveyed identify as non-binary.
Staff Bathrooms
A few issues have been happening with ZIS’s current bathrooms. After sending out my survey I can confirm that 84% of students have seen an adult in the bathroom mostly used by students. Although this may not seem like an issue to the adults, a lot of students tend to feel uncomfortable when there is an adult in the student bathroom. There is a staff bathroom and it is somewhat understandable to want to use the “main” bathroom due to the fact that there is only one toilet in the staff bathroom. A counterpoint could be that staff can prevent bullying in bathroom spaces, my solution doesn’t ban teachers from bathrooms but just avoids having teachers in bathrooms. If bullying becomes too big of an issue teachers can “monitor” the bathrooms.
Our new building will have a neutral bathroom for anyone who feels comfortable to use. The high school’s bathroom policy is more inclusive, it has an “everyone” bathroom for anybody to use.
ZIS Upper School, Adliswil
New Middle School, Adliswil. (Open in August)
Wheelchair Accessibility
Another challenge at ZIS would be the wheelchair accessibility. ZIS middle school’s campus is in a villa that is being rented which could explain the limited wheelchair accessibility.
There are exactly 78 stairs in a building with 4 floors but there are no elevators since the school can not fit one in. People in crutches tend to take their backpacks with them to classes to make things easier and people with wheelchairs have no accessible bathroom that they can use. After sending out the survey I can confirm that at least 10% of the 110 students have been injured and were in need of crutches or wheelchairs at ZIS which proves that there are people who need this. Luckily for us, the new building will have two elevators for wheelchair accessibility which should fix the wheelchair accessibility issues.
The new building will have two elevators for wheelchair accessibility which should fix the wheelchair accessibility issues.
Although ZIS middle school currently isn’t the best with bathrooms, the new building will have a lot better facilities for students and staff. The current building for middle school has a lot of issues and now many solutions. We all hope that the new building will solve our problems but for now, all we can do is hope.
*Gender-nonconforming and *Non-binary are terms referring to a gender that is neither girl or boy.
