Facilities on campus should be accessible for all students. Currently only a small number of university buildings have gender neutral toilets and gender-neutral changing facilities at our sports centre.
By liking this idea, you would mandate the student union to lobby the university to conduct a review of all current university buildings to ensure gender neutral facilities across campus are put in place where possible and that all future building plans include at least one gender neutral toilet.
We are all aware of the impact sport can have on student mental health and retention levels (student minds http://www.studentminds.org.uk/uploads/3/7/8/4/3784584/university_sport___mental_health_resource.pdf). Research conducted by the National LGBT Partnership in 2016 found that 64% of LGBT people who identified as something other than male or female (e.g., genderfluid or genderqueer) were not active enough to maintain good health. The Scottish Trans survey ‘Non[1]binary people’s experiences in the UK’ found that 42.2% have avoided the gym because of the fear of being harassed with 8% leaving additional comments about changing facilities and expressed concerns around safety- (Non-binary.pdf (pridesports.org.uk) . Any UCLan sporting facilities should have gender neutral changing facilities and It is imperative that trans, non-binary and gender-fluid students have the same access to sport anything less would be discrimination! As a university we should strive to ensure all our sports facilities and buildings are fully accessible to ALL students!
This policy calls for the university to place accessibility at the heart of all future development of any sporting facilities to ensure that those facilities are accessible to all regardless of protective characteristics.
Places on campus where this has worked really well are the facilities in the new student centre as these are accessible for all students and staff.