Many students may remember a presentation from the QSA during their gym class last year. Since that presentation, the Queer Student Association, along with alum Rachel Lutz, have continued to advocate for a gender-neutral bathroom at Lincoln.

The gender-neutral bathroom would replace the junior hall women’s bathroom. This bathroom was chosen because it is in a high-traffic area and no changes would need to be made, except a sign change, due to the closed-door stalls.

Lincoln would be the first school in the Portland Public Schools district to try a multi-stall gender-neutral bathroom and the QSA is presenting the idea to the school board as a “pilot” for other schools.

Vice Principal Alfredo Quintero said the board’s biggest concern with a gender neutral bathroom is safety.

A gender-neutral bathroom was tried in the PPS district before, but it was a single-stall room with a lock and due to a sexual assault was shut down. Quintero said, “There has always been a danger around bathrooms even when I was in high school, due to the lack of supervision,” he said. He said it’s where students sometimes hang out and cut class, vandalize and, in some reported cases, take drugs like Xanax.  

However, Quintero has advocated for the gender neutral bathroom saying, “It will be even safer, like a revolving door.”

After school on Sept. 6, Lincoln administrators and teachers listened to a presentation about the plan.  Leah Burie, a student at Lincoln, led the presentation.

She told the group gathered in Room 169 that “the bathroom’s goal is to give people what they need.” She explained that a lot of students who are members of the LGBTQ community don’t feel safe or comfortable using bathrooms designated “boys” or “girls.” And when asked how the junior girls might feel about losing their bathroom, she said they weren’t really losing it.  She said they would still be free to use the bathroom along with the students using it for the comfort of the gender-neutral purpose.

Quintero also said the administration will be setting up a means for students to give feedback about how well the gender-neutral bathroom is working and said that expectations of the way students use the facility “will be the same as in regular bathrooms. Just because it’s gender-neutral doesn’t mean we’re going to change our expectations about how kids should be behaving.”

The QSA started the movement a year ago. The effort comes at a time with the City of Portland is doing something similar.  

On Sept. 23, city officials announced that they had plans to place gender neutral signs outside about 600 city bathrooms. Previously, they had been labeled with traditional male/female signs.

The PPS board is to make a decision on Lincoln’s plan in October. If all goes smoothly, a gender-neutral sign will grace the junior hall women’s bathroom in November, accompanied by a ceremony. If the pilot at Lincoln is successful, the PPS board has said it will create a policy so other schools in the district can try it too.