DAYTON — It’s been one month since Ohio Senate Bill 104 took effect and since then many college campuses have updated the designation of bathrooms, locker and changing rooms to be only used by people based on their sex assigned at birth.
Facilities that were gender neutral are now labeled for use by men and women.
Tess Zagorski is a second year doctoral student at Wright State University in Dayton.
She has a sibling who is non-binary and wanted to raise awareness.
“This was a very blatant disregard for intersex students, trans students, non-binary students, gender fluid students,” Zagorski said.
For graduate student Hanna Sweeney, coming out to show support was an easy decision.
“My partner is non-binary, so it’s pretty close to home for me,” she said.
Sweeney said the decision was frustrating.
“It feels pointless that we’re making changes to make things more discriminatory rather than making changes towards having inclusivity and having bathrooms where people feel comfortable going to the bathroom on a school campus because that’s kind of important if you’re here all day to have that,” said Sweeney.
Zagorski said there are only 12 restrooms designated as family restrooms on campus.
“Multiple of those are clustered into one building. So across 25 plus buildings, it’s just not equal access,” Zagorski said.
From here, Zagorski hopes that the university’s administration is listening.
“We’re hoping that at least after we show them that there is a large community here in support of this, that they’re going to bring this up on their agenda as far as the importance that they’re putting on this,” she said.
Wright State said the sign changes were made to comply with the new state law.
Spectrum News 1 reached out and was told the school's policy is not to comment on events or activities that are not directly sponsored by Wright State. However, the school said it supports the "free exchange of ideas and engagement" on its campuses.
Take a look at the students' protest below: