Photo by Kendall Bulkiewicz | The Crow’s Nest
By Riley Benson
At a University of South Florida Board of Trustees meeting on Mar. 18, a regulation was added to the Student Code of Conduct requiring all USF students, staff, faculty members and campus visitors to use the restrooms and changing rooms of the sex that was assigned to them at birth.
This addition is in compliance with House Bill 1521, a.k.a the “Safety in Private Spaces Act,” that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law last year.
For all public and private Florida universities, the “Safety in Private Spaces Act” makes sure that “females and males [are] provided restrooms and changing facilities for their exclusive use in order to maintain public safety, decency, and decorum.” According to the state, the “right” facilities is the sex the person was assigned to at birth.
This new bill neglects to include transgender, genderfluid and non-binary people.
This bill faced backlash throughout the state, including the organization, Women in Struggle, who filed a lawsuit against the state saying the bill “causes irreparable harm for transgender, gender nonconforming, and certain intersex (TGNCI) people because this community’s identities may differ from their sex assigned at birth. When TGNCI people walk, talk, dress, or use an affirming restroom, they communicate their gender identity in a way that society can understand.”
Students have also been voicing their concerns about the new policy, and how it’ll impact students at USF specifically.
“The impact this legislation will have on the queer community is clearly and purposely harmful. It inspires fear and discomfort when a trans person seeks to access a vital public space, and contributes to the overriding transphobic malaise DeSantis’s legislature has inflicted on the state,” Eva Austin, a Senior majoring in Environmental Science said.
Austin is a the secretary of the PRIDE club at USF St. Petersburg and is personally impacted by the new legislation.
“Multiple of my friends have expressed discomfort and uncertainty about how to respond to CS/HB 1521, and outright disdain for the bigoted political message it’s trying to send. This bill cannot be seen as an individual act of transphobia, but as a single part of the recent partisan, discriminatory and unscientific anti-trans movement,” Austin said.
Now, students who are found using the “wrong” facilities will be considered trespassing and may face disciplinary action.
The only exemptions where someone of the opposite-sex can enter restroom or changing room is if they are assisting a child, elderly person or someone with disabilities, for law enforcement purposes, emergency medical purposes, custodial, maintenance or inspection purposes, or another facility is out of order.
In order to monitor the use of who is using the facilities “any administrative personnel, faculty member, security personnel, or law enforcement personnel” will be regulating the restrooms and can ask a user to exit the facility.
USF is “currently meeting with students, faculty, and staff to discuss the policy and its implementation,” according to Althea Johnson, USF’s director of media relations.
“The university would be unable to effectively monitor gendered bathrooms, and it is not their, nor DeSantis’s intention to do so,” Austin said.
“When anyone, cis or trans, can be considered suspicious for not presenting typically according to their gender, we are all exposed to harassment. The goal of this legislation is not to protect cis people, it is to signal that gender-queerness, and trans people especially, are unwelcome in public spaces,” they said further.
USF updated their student code of conduct to show compliance with the statute on Apr. 1. Starting July 1, 2024, a person can submit a complaint to the Attorney General, if USF, or another other location, is failing to comply with the policy, which could bring civil action and face a fine.
“The Attorney General may seek injunctive relief, and, for any covered entity found to have willfully violated this section, the Attorney General may seek to impose a fine of up to $10,000,” the statute states.
