Hopping off the Riverview bus, which was late as usual, you find that you only have five minutes until your class begins. You crunch some numbers and conclude that, if you were to sprint at 80% your maximum capacity, you could probably clear the doors to Hubbell Auditorium before the professor finished the opening announcements and began new lecture material. Looking around, you see that there are many others with similar thoughts racing through their heads: there is a lot of watch-checking and lots of snarling as people vie to pass through the narrow apertures that are the ITS doors. You take one step and feel your innards clench up. Regret hits instantly as you remember the gallon of milk you chugged just thirty minutes earlier and, making some rapid adjustments to your calculations, decide that if you relieved yourself in under a minute, a 90% energy expenditure should be enough to get you to class on time. Your determination is palpable as you deftly round the corner and soar into the ITS men’s restroom…
…only to nearly clothesline your English professor, who is standing right against the entryway because there are four people ahead of him awaiting the urinal and another poor soul unloading last night’s dinner behind the stall walls. As you observe the scene in horror, the door crashes open behind you and another desperate patron rushes in, almost bowling you over in his hastiness. The guy at the urinal finishes, and everyone else starts shuffling around, trying in vain to clear the way to the sink. Defeated, the guy swears under his breath and, with germ laden hands, proceeds to pull open the door and leave in a huff. Well, at least he’ll be on-time for his class. Stuck between professor and frantic student, you have no way to go but forward, dread descending upon you as you realize that, at this rate, you’d be lucky if you made it to the lecture at all.
A discussion must be had about UR’s bathrooms. Why, in what is one of the University’s most populated areas, is there only one, two-person bathroom per gender? Students get on and off buses around the clock, study parties go late into the night in ITS, and people are always loitering on the steps to Gleason, awaiting friends or the next Silver Line bus to carry them away from this miserable desert of bowel relief. Yes, there is a pair of slightly larger bathrooms upstairs, but it barely (and often fails to) accommodate Gleason’s occupants as it is, let alone the endless stream of students milling about ITS. As a result of this astronomically high student-to-bathroom ratio, not only are both the ITS and Gleason restrooms perpetually crowded, but they get filthy quickly due to the high traffic. The University needs to reassess how it distributes its restrooms by considering which areas contain the most students during the most hours of the day. These spots typically include libraries, dining halls, or any place of mass transit, such as a hallway that sits at the intersection between three buildings.
It’s true the school probably has more pressing matters to attend to, but the restroom situation should nevertheless remain on its radar. In closing, here are a list of some facilities that would benefit from more restrooms: Rettner Hall, the Stacks, Hutchison Hall, Lattimore Hall, Gleason Library, and yes, ITS.
