Rep. Mark Mickelson, R-Sioux Falls, addresses media after the final USD Law School Task Force meeting.


Sara Little knew the two orange stalls closest to her wouldn't be available. 

So she ran up two flights of stairs for a shot at a smaller, less popular bathroom.

The competition for women's stalls regularly plays out during 10-minute breaks between classes as the University of South Dakota law school.

"Some professors won't allow you to leave class while they're teaching, so if you miss going to the bathroom in that break because it's so backlogged, you're kind of out of luck," Little said. 

The lack of women's toilets in the law school came up as a point of concern during the USD Law School Task Force meeting last week. 

The task force voted to keep the school in Vermillion while adding additional classes to a second site in Sioux Falls. The group did not recommend the school spend any money to renovate the existing building.

Morgan Nelson, task force member and third-year law student, suggested the committee consider recommendations to address the lack of classroom space and, specifically, the lack of women's bathroom facilities compared to men's. 

Task force chair Rep. Mark Mickelson, R-Sioux Falls, dismissed Nelson's suggestion, saying it wasn't the task force's job to decide if they need to "put up walls or add toilets." 

"I was kind of disappointed that the discussion was kind of laughed off as something beneath our committee ... it seems like a very base need," Nelson said. 

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The law school building has a total of seven toilets for women. Men's restroom facilities have seven toilets and six urinals, roughly doubling the number of bathroom options for men. 

The number of bathrooms met building code standards when the school was constructed in 1981, said USD Director of Marketing Tena Haraldson. 

The university does not know the demographics of the law program at that time, Haraldson said. USD tracks the number of men and women at the campus level, but was unable to say how many men were in the law school compared to women when the building was first built. 

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Today, women make up more than 40 percent of the school's roughly 200 law students. Nationwide, women have surpassed men in law school, and now make up more than 50 percent of law students, according to 2016 data from the American Bar Association. 

And while the number of toilets may seem like a small issue, it can send a message to those women applying at USD. 

"If I were a prospective student, the message would be clear that our building is not updated and is behind the times," Nelson said.

Haraldson said updates to campus are a constant at USD. She's not sure if bathrooms are on the school's current 10-year building plan now, but that doesn't mean they won't be added. 

"If bathrooms haven't been addressed and everyone decides that's an issue," Haraldson said. "I'm sure it'll be addressed." 


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