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Portland Community College staff Weeze Herr and Nora Lindsey, student Zaire Bidgel, and coordinators Nash Jones and Debra Porta serve on PCC Gender Inclusive Spaces Committee. PCC is making big changes to make its transgender and gender nonconforming students more comfortable at Oregon's largest community college system. They are building 22 new unisex bathrooms and changing class rosters to use preferred names rather than legal names. (PORTLAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE)

Kole Myrick is a PCC student who helped lobby the community college to build new gender-neutral bathrooms.

Neither bathroom fit. Kole Myrick, a transgender Portland Community College student, drew looks when he used the women's restrooms at the school's Sylvania campus. He didn't feel confident using the men's.



Myrick, one of roughly 6,000 PCC students who self-identify as transgender or gender-nonconforming, now has another option. This year, the community college is building 22 single-occupancy, unisex bathrooms. The school has also made changes to its classroom rosters, noting students by their preferred names rather than legal names.



"For me, it's really nice. I don't have to worry about somebody giving me a weird look like, 'What are you doing in here?'" Myrick said. "For some of the women I know, they definitely wouldn't feel safe going in a men's room."



Students have asked for gender-neutral restrooms since 2011.



PCC has the highest percentage of transgender and gender-nonconforming students of any Oregon community college and one of the highest of any higher education institution in the state, according to a 2013 survey by the Oregon Student Association and the Oregon Community College Student Association.



Seven percent of PCC Cascade's 24,000 students identify as transgender or gender-nonconforming, as do another 6 percent of PCC Rock Creek's 26,000 and 4 percent of PCC Southeast's 11,000 students. Nearly 2,000 students at PCC Sylvania identify as transgender or nonconforming, about 6 percent of the school's 32,000 students.



Many of those students didn't feel safe using a PCC bathroom, said Nash Jones, the chair of the college's Gender Inclusive Spaces Committee and a coordinator at the Rock Creek Campus' Queer Resource Center. Some drove off campus for breaks, while others said they avoided eating or drinking during long school days, Jones said.



"It can become a safety issue, in that transgender and gender-nonconforming people may be harassed in gendered restrooms," Jones said. "That can range from intimidating looks to being approached or questioned in the restroom. Security could be called on someone, or worse yet, they could be physically threatened or harmed."



Students and faculty formed the Gender Neutral Bathroom Task Force in December of 2012, then rebranded as the Gender Inclusive Spaces Committee as their mission expanded.



Jones said the college had a unique opportunity: Thanks to a 2008 voter-approved $374 million construction bond, crews were constructing new buildings at PCC campuses.



"One of the missions of the bond project is to increase the health and safety of students," Jones said.



School officials agreed and used money from the bond to pay for eight bathrooms at Sylvania, seven at Cascade, five at Rock Creek, four on the Southeast Campus and one each at the Newberg and Willow Creek centers. School officials say they cannot itemize out the cost of the bathrooms, but 14 of the 22 new bathrooms will be in new buildings. Anyone can use them.



As crews began planning for the the new bathrooms, the inclusive spaces committee began working on its next project: allowing transgender students to use their preferred, rather than legal, names in PCC's computer systems.



Jones said the committee had heard from many transgender students who were outed in class when a teacher called their legal names. Even some faculty and staff members, including Jones, were listed by names they no longer used.



"Having that called out on the first day of class, or every time you send an email, can create an unnecessary barrier to your education," Jones said. "You might not feel confident that it's safe to confront your teacher or your classmates with your preferred name."



Staff in the school's technology solutions department staff members acted quickly, Jones said.



"The bathroom campaign had taken years, so we were thinking this was another years-long campaign," Jones said. "It wasn't anything like that. The staff members who oversee technology were incredibly responsive."



They began writing code to update classroom rosters. They offered students and faculty the option to update their records and request a new school e-mail address.



"It felt like a huge win to us," Jones said. "We're helping them identifying the accessibility needs of our community, and they're working to serve those needs."



As for Myrick, the 39-year-old will graduate this month with an associate degree in computer information systems: network administration. He'll be the school's commencement speaker June 12. But he's already thinking about next year.



Myrick plans to return to PCC to pursue the next step in his education, an associate arts Oregon transfer degree. He wants to eventually work at a community college as a student leadership or queer resource coordinator.



He'll also begin working on his next goal: securing safe locker room spaces for transgender students across the PCC system. Two will open at Rock Creek this year.



"I wish I could have taken (physical education) classes," Myrick said. "But with only having gendered locker rooms, it was very uncomfortable for me."



-- Casey Parks

503-221-8271

cparks@oregonian.com; @caseyparks