In May 2021, in Issue 5, PDBY published an article titled, “Fact Check: Did Certain Buildings at UP never have female bathrooms?” The impetus for the article arose when a recent poll conducted by Instagram meme page @Life_at_Tuks asked followers whether schools were designed more for males or females. In one response that the page received, it was stated that “there isn’t even a ladies bathroom in Engineering 2”.
In response to the statement, another social media user explained that the statement was true and untrue explaining that the original design did not make allowance for the implementation of female bathrooms due to the engineering field being considered a chiefly “male field”. The user went onto ascertain that the one female bathroom currently located in the Engineering 2 building was “just a male bathroom that they converted into a female bathroom” and that the bathroom is “[…] so small that you can’t get into either of the [two] stalls with a backpack on”.
PDBY sought to verify the statements made regarding the prevalence of female bathrooms in the Engineering 2 building. The article could not definitively ascertain the validity of the statements. However, with the assistance of Sian Pretorius-Nel, Archival Assistant at UP, an article snippet from a 1986 edition of PDBY (formerly known as Perdeby) was found which stated that a petition was filed by female students over the lack of female bathrooms in the Engineering 2 building despite having to attend classes for the entirety of the day at the building. Pretorius-Nel mentioned to PDBY that she found an article which stated that there were no facilities (bathrooms) in the JG Strijdom Building (current day Engineering 2 building) at the time which caused the female students to complain. She hypothesised, that “I think this was mostly due to the fact that this was a “practical building” with no secretary, however, I am not sure. Later a bathroom was probably added”.
Image: Masehle Mailula
Susanna is currently stu(dying) genetics and joined the PDBY team in 2019. She divides her time between writing and playing with plant disease samples. Her contributions span across Science, politics and all things spicy. If you are or were in the SRC, she’s probably spammed you with messages for a story. She’s got a memory like an elephant – so she probably keeps track of student promises. Picture not to scale.