GOA institutes all-gender bathrooms at its campuses

WEST ORANGE, NJ — Golda Och Academy in West Orange is practicing “chesed,” or loving kindness, through its conscious endeavor to include everyone in the Jewish community, last week designating all-gender restrooms at its Eric F. Ross Upper School Campus and Wilf Lower School Campus. The move was taken to cultivate a welcoming environment for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning, or LGBTQ, community.

According to GOA spokeswoman Erin Sternthal, there are four all-gender restrooms — one at the upper school located in the nurse’s office and three at the lower school with two on the first floor near the nurse’s office and a third on the second floor.

“We have a number of bathrooms on each campus, including single-stall bathrooms that have always been available to all students,” Sternthal told the West Orange Chronicle. “By posting ‘all-gender restroom’ signs on these bathrooms, we are committing to making sure all students know there is a restroom for them to use regardless of how they identify their gender.

“The bathrooms were previously all single-stall, non-faculty restrooms,” Sternthal continued. “Only the signage changed.”

So, while these bathrooms have always been available to everyone, the change in signage was about taking a stand for inclusion.

“We wanted to make a statement and make it known that everyone has a safe restroom space should they need it,” Director of Student Life Jordan Herskowitz told the Chronicle. “GOA has always been a welcoming environment to me as a gay man, and I feel that it is my responsibility to extend that practice and carry out GOA’s mission of allowing all students — regardless of gender identity and/or sexual orientation — to learn and grow in a safe, welcoming environment.”

Head of School Adam Shapiro stressed that this attitude and such actions will benefit all students at the school.

“The issues of equality and inclusion, and the desire to create a safe space for learning and expression in our school, are of paramount importance to us,” Shapiro told the Chronicle. “We teach our students that it is their responsibility to be socially active citizens of the world and to always speak out and up in an effort to pursue social justice. As a result, we want those important conversations and discussions to happen here in school so that our students are prepared to go out and face those tough questions throughout their lives.”

Leaders of the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance — Alissa Lampert, Nesya Nelkin and Lizzie Irwin — are especially pleased to have contributed to this change.

“Having a gender-neutral bathroom is important at any school in order to increase the comfort and safety of transgender and non-binary students, who might otherwise experience dysphoria or even harassment by other students, or who may avoid using school bathrooms altogether in order to prevent these problems,” Nelkin, a junior from Highland Park, told the Chronicle. “At a small school like GOA in particular, where there is perhaps less discussion of LGBTQ issues, all-gender bathrooms are also important because they increase visibility and conversation.”

“Having all-gender bathrooms at a school like GOA promotes the idea that Judaism and LGBTQ acceptance can be combined,” Lampert told the Chronicle. “When most people think of religions in relation to LGBTQ tolerance, they think of unmoving, strict religious rules that do not promote acceptance or understanding of different beliefs, identities or lifestyles. Having all-gender bathrooms at a Jewish day school shows people that one does not have to give up their religious beliefs as an LGBTQ person; they can go hand in hand and support each other.

“It also promotes more conversation about LGBTQ acceptance in the Jewish community, connecting the ideas of teachings like ‘like your neighbor like yourself’ with tolerance of different people in a developing world,” Lampert continued. “Having an all-gender bathroom, instead of just a two-gender bathroom, also promotes the idea that there are more than just two or three genders, and that everyone’s gender identity is valid and accepted.”

Thanks to the efforts of the GSA and school personnel, GOA has been taking several steps toward making the school environment welcoming for everyone.

“We’ve been actively working on making our school a more inclusive and welcoming environment over the last few years, and having all-gender bathrooms was part of our improvement plan that we came up with as we began our first year in partnership with Keshet,” Herskowitz said. “We did not receive any formal requests for an all-gender bathroom, but our administration and LGBTQ committee agreed that it’s a necessary step to increase our efforts of LGBTQ inclusion.”

Keshet is an American nonprofit that works for LGBTQ equality and inclusiveness in the Jewish community.

In addition to the new signage on the all-gender restrooms and the partnership with Keshet, GOA has recently instituted a gender-neutral dress code and has limited the use of gender pronouns in the language with regard to the junior/senior prom.

“The dress code is not divided by what boys are allowed to wear and what girls are allowed to wear; rather it is divided by articles of clothing. All students must abide by all points of the code,” Sternthal said. As for prom, “moving away from assumptions that boys bring girls as dates and vice versa, we tell students they are allowed to bring a ‘guest.’”

Despite these advances, the school is always looking to do more to increase inclusivity.

“Overall, I’d like to see more initiatives toward education about LGBTQ rights and issues,” Nelkin said. “I would also like to see further initiatives implemented in a similar vein to the new gender-neutral bathroom that ‘de-gender’ unnecessarily gendered events and institutions.”

“I would like to see more talking about LGBTQ issues in GOA as a whole,” Lampert said. “I would like to see more discussion in health classes and on national events such as Pride Month. I hope that subtle changes that GOA has made, like altering dress code rules so male students can feel more comfortable should they choose to wear skirts, along with larger changes like implementing an all-gender bathroom, students will feel more comfortable expressing themselves in the school and will make the school a more diverse, educational place. I want to see all students and faculty working together to accept all people’s identities so that everyone can feel comfortable.”

  FEATURED, Golda Och Academy, LGBTQ