And Now, the Rest (Room) of the Story

With apologies to Paul Harvey, here are the details on the unique arrangements for restrooms at the DNC.

Monday evening, the opening night of the Democratic National Convention, Susan Ferrechio, the National Politics Correspondent for the Washington Times, tweeted: “In the press filing center at the DNC, organizers took away the ladies room.”

This year’s DNC convention is being held at Chicago’s United Center, home of the Chicago Bulls and Blackhawks. According to the event map of the United Center provided by the DNC organizers, there are at least 4 pairings of Men/Women restrooms on each level of the center (the “Club level” map is shown below as an example). However, one of the pairings on each floor omits a Women's restroom and includes an "all gender" restroom instead.

Based on this pre-existing map (also the Club level) provided by the United Center on its website, the restrooms labeled "all gender" on the DNC map are usually Women's rooms:

Therefore, the DNC is not simply using the facilities as the United Center usually has them designated, but has made a conscious decision to repurpose some of the Women's rooms & leave the Men's rooms alone.

After being accused of faking her report by a number of Twitter users, Susan Ferrechio posted several follow up tweets explaining that the “press filing center” referenced in her original tweet is not in the main building of the United Center.

Regardless of the exact location of the restrooms to which Ferrechio is referring, the DNC’s own map makes clear that there are more restrooms exclusively designated for men than for women.

The bottom line is that in addition to all the other “firsts” for this year’s Democratic National Convention, this DNC has the distinction of being the first public event in history where the organizers apparently said to themselves, What we really need are more men's rooms than women's!