A sign on the first floor of engineering building Bolz Hall reads: “Nearest accessible women’s restroom is located on the second floor.” Signs like this are littered around Bolz Hall and Hitchcock Hall, where each floor has just one gendered bathroom. Credit: Dalina Houangvilay | Lantern Reporter.
In 2004, Ohio State physics professor Bunny Clark gave an interview as? part of The Ohio State University Oral History Project, where she shared that the best thing she did in her time at Ohio State was “take over” the fourth floor men’s bathroom in an engineering building.
Clark said in the interview that an Ohio State building she was working in had two men’s bathrooms on the fourth floor, but no women’s. Clark said that she considered the fact that some graduate students on the floor were women, so replaced the men’s bathroom sign in one of the restrooms with a women’s sign and put pictures over all the urinals.
“[Physics professor] John Wilkins had just come in and one of the reasons he said he wanted that particular place was that he had the men’s room right next to him,” Clark said in the interview. “I said, ‘Too bad, you lost it.’ He finally forgave me. It’s still there.”
In engineering buildings like Hitchcock Hall or Bolz Hall, most floors hold just one gendered bathroom, alternating between a men’s bathroom on one floor and a women’s on the next, leading to rumors and annoyance among engineering students.
According to Society of Women Engineers president and fourth-year in computer science and engineering Amy Albert, there is a longstanding rumor that the engineering buildings were built without considering that women would be in those buildings and need restrooms, so each floor was allotted space for one gendered bathroom, specifically only men’s.
Calista France, a third-year in environmental engineering, was told this rumor was a fact. She also said that she considered it to be the truth.
University spokesperson Dan Hedman stated in an email that Hitchcock Hall, built in 1967, and Bolz Hall, built in 1989, were constructed in accordance to the building codes and standards of the time, but have been renovated since as accessibility and restroom facilities requirements have evolved.
Hedman said that these renovations were dependent on factors like applicable code requirements, available funding and specific college or unit needs.
“Today, Ohio State’s building design standards establish requirements for new construction and renovations. They do not prescribe that every floor of every building must have both a men’s and women’s restroom,” Hedman said. “Restroom programming is evaluated based on the size, type and function of the building and the applicable code and accessibility requirements. Older buildings may therefore have configurations that reflect the standards and building layouts in place when they were constructed.”
France said that traveling between floors to find a women’s restroom is annoying, especially in cases where she misses portions of class or work to use the restroom, which in two-hour classes, was unavoidable.
“I used to work in a lab in the basement of Hitchcock, and of course, there’s no women’s bathrooms in the basement, so then I would go up to the first floor,” France said. “But then sometimes they’d be cleaning the first floor bathrooms, which, obviously, I want the bathrooms to be cleaned. I would have to go all the way from the basement to the third floor, just to go to the bathroom.”
To Albert, though she said she finds the rumor that the engineering buildings were only built with men’s bathrooms disheartening, wayfinding tips and stories of restroom location inconvenience create community among the engineering students.
“It’s actually something that, as we become upperclassmen, we kind of have to pass down to the underclassmen because I’ve heard so many people just have these side conversations like, ‘oh, and then when I’m in Hitchcock, there’s not even a bathroom,’ and you have to be like, ‘oh, actually, so if you want to get to the bathroom, you have to go [to a different floor]’ and we kind of share the map,” Albert said.
France thought that the restroom difficulties could be improved through renovation to allow for both men’s and women’s bathrooms on the same floor. Albert suggested making building maps clearer, particularly in guiding people to restrooms, or making the restrooms in the engineering buildings gender neutral.
Clark was Ohio State’s first woman faculty member in the physics department in 1981, and after sharing her story about her restroom takeover in the 2004 interview, Clark was presented with the idea of calling future women’s bathrooms in the engineering buildings “Bunny Rooms”.
The legacy of women like Clark is still felt by the women engineering students today.
“I feel very proud to represent the women who potentially, a few decades ago, didn’t even have a building for them, so I’m proud to be in that building, proud to be fighting the uphill battle,” Albert said. “Seeing more and more women, especially [Society of Women Engineers], is so rewarding to see how many women are in engineering these days, and succeeding.”
