It does not matter what time of day, the women’s bathroom by The Pit has unflushed toilets, wet floors, dirty sinks, sticky stalls and a bad smell.
Students need to be better at using the campus bathrooms.
We’re all adults, we should all know bathroom etiquette. The campus bathrooms are cleaned by custodial staff every hour, and yet the bathrooms end up unusable because of the misuse by students. Students spend a lot of time in the women’s bathrooms doing their make-up, vaping, threading their eyebrows. There are often line ups because everyone has to go to upwards of five stalls before finding one that’s useable. Most are disgusting. Toilet bowls are full of toilet paper, and other things that should have been flushed, seats are wet and the floor is filthy and sticky.
It is really hard having unusable bathrooms in a place where most people spend their entire day. Nobody wants to walk into a gross bathroom.
The bathrooms with the highest traffic throughout the day, particularly the ones by The Pit and between the Tim Hortons and the campus bookstore in A wing, tend to become the dirtiest.
According to a 2019 article in Time Magazine, bathrooms are known to have the most germs in any given place like restaurants, concerts and schools.
Custodians should not be responsible for filthy habits. Students should make sure the toilet is flushed and clear for others to use.
Put yourself in the shoes of a custodian before you leave the bathroom.
While using the bathrooms, respect the custodians that clean them. Not only would we be helping them out but it would make the bathrooms more usable.
The college can also improve conditions by installing air fresheners, as well as adding more soap and paper towels. Changing the quality of the toilet paper might help too because it just won’t flush.
We can all play our part in making sure that the bathrooms stay clean by encouraging our peers and report any bathroom we see that needs attention.
We can also limit the number of students who go in the bathrooms by giving options for other bathrooms that could be used. This would be as simple as putting up signs indicating where alternate bathrooms can be found.
Putting up signs reminding students to be mindful and clean might also help.
We all contribute to the cleanliness of not only our bathrooms but our campus. We can all agree that we do not want Durham College to be known for filthy bathrooms. We should treat the washrooms the same way we treat those in our own spaces or like our friends’ spaces when we visit.
Flush the toilet, wipe the seat and use the garbage.