Rating the Restrooms on Campus

by Trevor Siegler

If you’re like me and you’ve abused your liver and bladder so much over the past few years that it’s all you can do to manage through the day without embarassing yourself, the locations of restrooms all over campus can only be inviting. But if the urge to go overrides the urge to make sure you’re not sitting in someone else’s…well, you know…, you’re just doing yourself and your fellow students a disfavor. So, with all the number ones and number twos I’ve had to do all over campus for the past two semesters, I’d venture to say I know a thing or two when it comes to where best to poo-pooh. While I go wash my hands of that last sentence, peruse the list that follows:

THE BEST - Hendrix Center

I can’t speak for the ladies’ rooms in the Hendrix Center (because I’m a dude), but the men’s rooms here are top-of-the-line bowel-movement friendly. You enter into a muted Prussian gray setting, with space-age stalls that allow the finest in privacy and discretion while you practice excretion. The toilet paper is well-stocked, and even if you run out you can always gently tap on the wall of your neighbor, who will oblige with whatever surplus rolls he happens to have. The gentle rushing sound of the exhaust when you are done calms you, as does the Brahms concertos piped in through the ducts above thanks to campus radio services. A fresh cleansing of the hands of all detritus follows in the China sinks, where your hands are then towelled off by Bert, the gracious men’s room attendent. He responds well to a five-dollar bill, but will demure from anything of higher coinage. The experience is so pleasant, you may just decide to venture a trip to the Chinese food place in the accompanying food court just so you can return once again, and with an even fuller experience to enjoy.

THE ALSO-RANS - Daniel Hall, Cooper Library (Fourth Floor)

If it’s quantity you seek, not quality, then let me suggest a voyage to the first floor of Daniel Hall, which offers not one but two stalls, well-proportioned for today’s growing overweight population. True, the setting is not ideal (harsh halogen lights pierce the eyeballs as the blandly khaki walls invite not so much contemplation as constipation), but once you get used to the John Cage experimental “wall of sound” background music it really isn’t so bad. Sometimes you can stumble across interesting reading material, such as someone’s less-than-stellar research paper on “why the Germans lost the War of 1812” or “Dorothy Parker Was a Man-Hating Lesbo Nazi”. The first bathroom you encounter on the fourth floor of the Cooper Library, alas, is not as pleasing to the aesthetic (even harsher lights meant to suggest the full rush of nuclear winter blind you to the unpleasant pus-stained mirrors where countless freshmen have endeavored to pop that elusive magma-encased pimple), but for sheer quantity it can’t be beat (three stalls and a wall of stand-alone wall fixtures. You would be well advised to steer clear of Bert the bathroom attendent, however; he’s known for his rude graphics and sayings that litter the stalls. If you can cope with the lesser works of Sting’s solo career, perhaps you can avoid the dreaded “piss-stain down the front of the jeans” that has befallen less sturdy youths.

THE BAD - Every Other Bathroom on Campus

Whether it’s the horror of communal showers in the Shoeboxes, or the rancid smell emenating from an unknown source in Martin Hall, it seems that every other bathroom on campus is strictly “sit, shit, quit”. There’s no more polite way to put it, as there is also no polite way to describe the caterwauling of Yoko Ono records that assault the senses in each. And beware the “attendent,” Bert. He’s more like the restroom degenerate.

THE WORST - The second Floor of Cooper Library

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here. Sickly yellow walls clashing with gun-metal gray stalls, all while Wesley Willis verbally assaults you for simply entering. Even Bert wouldn’t venture down there. Most of the stalls are littered with Anais Nin books that some pimple-faced freshman took in for…well, certainly not to further their studies. Nuff said.

I hope I’ve been some help…some disgusting, off-putting, and TMI-cringe-worthy help. If you need me, I’ll be at my off-campus residence. Why? Because the restrooms on campus are No Man’s Land, that’s why.