BURLINGTON, Vt.—The University of Vermont’s big new student center doesn’t just have women’s bathrooms and men’s bathrooms.

It also has gender-neutral bathrooms, a feature added to accommodate transgendered people, as well as those with some disabilities. The four single bathrooms in the new Dudley H. Davis Center—each with a toilet, sink, shower and lockable door—cost about $2,500 a piece to build. Their wall signs identify each as “gender neutral restroom.”

At least 17 colleges and universities have included gender-neutral bathrooms in their new construction or in retrofitting residence halls, said Stephanie Gordon, director of educational programs at the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators.

“A multi-use bathroom doesn’t necessarily feel safe to transgendered students, because they have concerns about how their gender would be read by others,” said Dot Brauer, director of the school’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning and Ally Services.