On Wednesday, Nov. 30 the Gender Neutral Restroom Forums held a second open meeting.
Audience members who attended were given the opportunity to vote on the new signs that will be placed on the restrooms.
The forum was led by Dr. Valyncia Raphael with two guest speakers from the Angel Step Up program, Rachel Price and Cindy Tamayo.
The forum began with Raphael explaining the purpose of the forum and providing some information on gender identity and gender expression.
Raphael said, “I thought the turnout was great,” Raphael said. “We had a perfect amount of small group discussion, which is really important for the topic.”
While the purpose of the forum was to vote on the signs that Cerritos College will use for the gender-neutral bathrooms that will be placed on campus, the guest speakers from Angel Step Up used some time to further educate the audience on gender and sexual identity.
All three speakers gave a speech about the issues before allowing the members of the audience to break into smaller conversations and vote on the matter.
The forum audience contained about 15 people who involved themselves in the conversation.
All the votes from the four forums will be tallied to decide the signs that will be used when the restrooms are placed on campus.
Every place that provides public service is required to have a gender neutral restroom put into place by Mar. 1 next year, but Cerritos hopes to have its signs put into place close to the start of next semester.
Although the forums did not bring in a huge number of people attendees believed that they accomplished their goal.
Theatre major Isaac Simons-Araya said, “I think the information spreads to the people that are here, there are people that will tell others and explain it, as well as share resources.”
Guest speaker Price delivered a personal testimony about her experiences being a member of the LGBTQI community.
She spoke of her experiences being a member of the LGBTQI community during the 1980s and provided insight on what she went through.
She closed out her testimony by handing out advice to those in the audience.
“I understand that times have changed, “ she said. “The experiences I had shouldn’t be [your experiences today], now we’re in 2017, we have a lot of help available.”
After the speakers delivered their speeches the audience members were broken down into groups and asked to discuss certain topics that included; What can we do to make the campus safe for all Falcons?
Raphael felt that the small group portion of the forum was beneficial.
“I think some of these concepts are things that people haven’t talked about ever, so I think having more interactive small conversations really help people process the information,” she concluded.
