Thomas Leper and Kirpass Kaur
Connor Fraser
We students spend a good amount of time on campus. During that time, we rely heavily on the campus infrastructure to tend to our needs, and one of those key infrastructures is bathrooms. No one wants to take a shit on campus, but you gotta go when you gotta go.
In that moment of panic, you feel helpless when you come across a toilet seat in a place such as the HIL, covered with pee or the art gallery of comments and snapchat handles. I cannot count the amount of times I have gone into a HIL bathroom and there is urine everywhere. I understand having to go and the urinals are occupied, but that is no excuse to not lift up the toilet seat.
And the worst bathroom of them all is on the first floor of MacLaggan Hall. It looks so old, cramped, and downright disgusting. They are straight out of Silence of the Lambs or a trap from Jigsaw from the Saw horror franchise. In the male bathroom, it is just a sink, toilet stall and urinal — that is it. There’s no room to move; certainly not if there are two people in there, let alone people waiting in line.
On the second floor of Carleton, there used to be tons of writing on the stalls talking about silly things or two people having a conversation. Recently a lot of that graffiti has been erased from those bathrooms, keeping them boring and conversation-less. That is not to say that all graffiti has been erased, and as time goes on through the year, more will be added.
Now Imagine you get your period unexpectedly and you are promised tampons and pads because all these pamphlets around campus claim that they are available in some bathrooms. And you follow the trail, go into a bathroom with tampon and pad dispensers, but nothing. Sucks if you’re wearing white.
Some accessibility bathrooms don’t even go beyond the automatic door opening button in terms of accessibility. The garbage bin in some of them is far away from the paper towel dispenser, and in some instances, you have to lunge to get to the toilet paper. One example of such a bathroom is on the first floor in Bailey Hall – what a place to have a physical disability.
You’d also find yourself standing in front of the sink, contemplating why you are paying your hard work away for education when you can’t even get some soap to wash your hands.
Now while I can not promise these spots will be good for long, currently these are what we believe to be the best bathrooms depending on your need.
Within the Science Library Women’s Bathroom. There is almost always some sort of menstrual product available on the first floor women’s bathroom in the Science Library. It may not be ideal for some, but hey, something is better than nothing when you’re literally bleeding. It may be dirty, or out of paper towels, or even toilet paper sometimes, but not menstrual products, or perhaps this building is really really lucky for me.
Best Bathroom based on Accessibility: For pure accessibility, it has to be the SUB bathroom. Due to the campus being on a hill there is no true accessible bathroom on campus. Therefore, we must look at how easy it is to use the bathrooms once you are already in the building. While the singular bathrooms on the first floor are very small and look old and disgusting and were a top contender for the worst bathrooms, the ones in the main hall are right there in the cafeteria for convenience, and the toilets in the stalls are the closest to the toilet paper. Because don’t you hate it when you have to lunge in order to get toilet paper that should be right there.
Best Bathroom with Graffiti: Unfortunately, since it is the beginning of the year, the graffiti that existed in these bathrooms — SUB, Tilley Hall, and especially, Carleton — has been removed. However, that does not keep the graffiti artists and poets at bay for long. In fact, Carleton bathrooms have already attracted art. In one stall, in a men’s bathroom,, there is a crudely drawn sun behind a rainbow. While it seems like a simple drawing, it is more than that. It is a sign! A sign that Carleton graffiti can never truly be erased: the graffiti will rise again more plentiful, artistic, and poetic then it ever has before.
Best Bathroom based on Not Looking Shitty: For not looking like complete shit goes to Marshall D’Avray. When you walk in it does not feel like a prison cell but instead more like a bathroom you would have seen in high school. That sounds like an insult, but compared to the other bathrooms it is a compliment. However, the bathrooms are in the least accessible building on campus. Marshall D’Avray Hall is one of if not the furthest UNB hall that is up the hill. It is closer in distance to NBCC than it is to the SUB. Anyone who has a physical disability and no way of using vehicles will have a hard time getting up there.
All of the Above (Best Overall): The best bathroom over all is The Cellar bathroom. There are two sets of bathrooms with a lot of room. There is always soap in the containers ready for a person to use, tampons are plentiful and it is very easy to access the toilet paper while sitting down. As well, I, a person who has been a student here for three years, have never once seen pee on the toilet seats here, which is surprising because The Cellar is a bar, and normally, the bathrooms in bars are known for being terrible. What is worth pointing out is The Cellar and the bathrooms, while in the SUB, are not associated with UNB. They merely rent space in the building, making the best bathroom on campus a non-UNB bathroom.
