Students at Mohawk College are campaigning for the school to introduce sharps disposal containers in washrooms.
The Change.org petition campaign, being led by a group of six Mohawk students in their final year of the social service workers program, currently has over 100 signatures.
Vince Soliveri, a campaign organizer, said the petition is driven by safety concerns and a desire to de-stigmatize the use of needles.
Currently, Mohawk College does not have sharps disposals in washrooms.
Instead, there are signs asking students not to flush needles down the toilet or put them in the garbage.
“Because it is so stigmatized, people do not want to have that conversation,” Soliveri said. “Telling people to cap needles and take them home is a pretty harmful way to go about the situation.”
Soliveri first started thinking about the subject when a harm reduction worker from the AIDS Network came in to speak to the crisis intervention class in November.
“[The harm reduction worker] brought up that Mohawk College is branding itself as a safe and inclusive space for anybody and having a sticker like that on the wall is stigmatizing for those that use needles and do not really to create a safe and inclusive environment for people who do use needles for any reason,” Soliveri said.
The project team members began serious work on the project in January.
Soliveri has a particular connection to the issue as well, being a placement student with the AIDS Network in downtown Hamilton.
These experiences make him confident about the feasibility of installing sharps disposals.
“It does not really come at an expense other than a little bit of labor screwing the sharps container and mounting it on the wall. That is really the hardest part of it because everything else is provided by other agencies in the city,” Soliveri said.
The AIDS Network currently runs a “Community Points” program in collaboration with Hamilton Public Health Services, where the organization picks up needles and drops off sharps disposal containers around the city by request.
For the rest of the semester, the team will be working out the exact details of a potential sharps disposal program. They are also planning a public outreach phase.
After that, they will bring their plans to the college administration.
“This is probably a project that will go beyond our time as students,” Soliveri said. “We finish school in April, and we are hoping by then, we can at least have a pretty good set of signatures in our petition that we are circulating around members of the Mohawk community.”
Soliveri is hopeful that the petition could have lasting effects beyond Mohawk.
“We are hoping if this project is successful and people are into it and understand the value, that it can be used as a framework for other places in the city,” Soliveri said. “And that could be as big as a university or that could be as small as your local café, just letting people understand that the process is not as daunting as people think it is.”
A sharps disposal system at Mohawk would not be the first of its kind.
Ryerson University is planning to install sharps containers in over 500 washrooms in university-owned buildings following a successful pilot project last January.
McMaster lacks sharps disposal containers in its washrooms. McMaster Associate Director Health Safety and Risk Management Lisa Morine said the university regularly inspects the campus and sees no present need to implement sharps disposals in washrooms.
The Mohawk College online petition can be found at https://www.change.org/p/get-sharps-containers-at-mohawk-college. To contact the Community Points program for disposal of sharps or for harm reduction supplies, call 905-546-2489.
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McMaster students can now find 50 all-genders washrooms on campus. As per definitions from McMaster’s Equity and Inclusion Office define, these bathrooms are free to use no matter one’s gender identity.
Most of the facilities have been placed in the Ann Bourns Building, the Michael DeGroote Centre for Learning and Discovery and the future Living Learning Centre set to open in 2019, but the majority of the university’s buildings now have at least one all-genders washroom.
“Being able to access safe and accessible washrooms is a human right; however, for campus members who identify as transgender, gender non-binary, two-spirit or who do not conform to strict gender expectations, washrooms are often unsafe places where they may be subjected to verbal and physical harassment,” read part of a statement from the Equity and Inclusion Office.
A second-year non-binary McMaster student who requested to be referred to under the alias of Jay echoed this sentiment.
“I think it is critical to have all-genders washrooms because there are students with non-binary identities, and these students will not feel comfortable in washrooms that are assigned exclusively for men or for women,” they said.
Trailing behind other Canadian universities, such as the University of Toronto, York University and Ryerson University, the decision to implement McMaster’s all-genders washrooms initiative was years in the making.
“I think it is critical to have all-genders washrooms because there are students with non-binary identities, and these students will not feel comfortable in washrooms that are assigned exclusively for men or for women.”
Jay
Non-binary McMaster Student
The university’s facilities update is, in part, a product of recent, pro-LGBT legislative changes such as Bill C-16, which included gender identity and gender expression in the list of hate crime sentencing provisions in the Canadian Criminal Code and prohibited grounds of discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act. Another more local policy change was the pro-trans rights protocol that Hamilton City Council passed in March 2017.
On campus, the shift for McMaster to adopt all-genders washrooms gained traction when Ehima Osazuwa, the McMaster Students Union President in 2015-2016, ran on a platform that showcased the importance of gender-neutral washrooms on campus.
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With financial assistance from McMaster’s work/study program and project funding from the Equity and Inclusion Office and The President’s Advisory Committee on Building an Inclusive Community, trans, gender non-binary and agender students were hired to lead the all-genders washroom Project.
McMaster’s new washrooms are part of a multi-phased initiative aimed at improving trans inclusion on campus.
“[The] Equity and Inclusion Office will be launching an educational campaign for the broader campus community and on-line resource for trans, gender non-binary and Two-Spirit students, staff and faculty members,” said Vilma Rossi, the senior program manager of the Equity Services program at the university’s Equity and Inclusion Office.
“We’ve already started populating the site with information and will continue to do so over the next several weeks as we edit and confirm accuracy of information and contact person.”
As part of the initiative, the university also aspires to renovate the multi-stall bathrooms in the McMaster University Student Centre Atrium into new, multi-user, accessible all-genders washrooms.
“There really, I think, is no excuse for not having washrooms available for trans, non-binary, and Two-Spirit students… They should be expected from the university… Being able to change a sign is not a very difficult request,” said Jay.
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