I am a simple man. Although I have the relative good fortune of living in the wealthiest state in the world and occupy a position of seemingly infinite upward mobility, my needs and desires are few. I have no use for the highly coveted bling- bling of Lexuses, flashy jewelry, high-powered video game machines or even fine dining at the District’s various five-star restaurants, though my financial station and societal privilege may one day entitle me to these things. Indeed, I can scarcely yearn for these finer amenities of life in the developed world when I am confronted on a near daily basis with one of the few things I cannot abide: an unclean bathroom.
It’s not much to ask when you think about it. We live in a highly efficient corner of the world, driven by high-tech, digital, synthetic components and fueled by an essentially inexhaustible source of material and financial wealth. The streets are awash with six-figure luxury sedans, air-conditioned high rises and designer clothes, yet the second I enter a public restroom, I feel like I am in a third-world country.
At first I attributed the general pattern of disarray, poor sanitation and unbearable stench of 99 percent of the country’s men’s rooms to a general societal disinterest in water closet maintenance?a task too mundane for even the least privileged of our planners and workers. So I got used to it and have managed to go about my day-to-day routine somewhat unhindered, looking longingly to those evenings that I might spend at one of those five-star restaurants or hotels where the men’s rooms are sparklingly clean, adorned with gold taps, fragrant soaps and friendly attendants distributing freshly cleaned towels. I sure as hell am not getting it at Georgetown, high tuition or otherwise.
Unfortunately, an oft-noted but quickly-discarded piece of knowledge jarringly re-entered my thoughts during this past week: It doesn’t have to be this way. Sitting at dinner, a friend of mine wandered off to the unisex bathroom and quickly returned, remarking that it was both filthy and unusable. I remembered quickly that I had used the same restroom just that day, and in my internal registry had noted that it was remarkably clean and even boasted soft lighting and a wicker basket of cloth towels. I gave it a six, maybe seven out of 10. Of course, these assessments are by now perfunctory and subconscious, but I remember having been pleasantly surprised with this restaurant’s facilities. It was jarring indeed to have the same lavatory dismissed as unusable. Her comment was later followed by a general critique of unisex bathrooms.
Then it came back to me: It is not that all bathrooms are filthy, stagnant and intolerable. It is almost exclusively the men’s rooms of this world that have skewed my perceptions and expectations so radically.
I have often heard stories of women’s restrooms that are both clean and inviting?sometimes even accompanied by furnishings, ambient lighting, etc. Now maybe I’m just a sissy, but I cannot help but feel a bit of envy when I routinely enter the men’s rooms in Leavey, Maguire and, God forbid, Darnall. I am confronted with austere grey tile, broken stalls, homophobic grafitti, intentionally clogged, overflowing toilets, non-functioning faucets and pools of piss collecting in the recessed portions of the floor.
At first blush, one might blame this state of disorder and uncleanliness on the building designers or maintenance staff whose job it is, afterall, to ensure the smooth operation of said facilities. This is ultimately unfair, however, as it is scarcely in the interest of our janitorial staff, much less the building planners, to give us anything but an austere, quasi-functional space. I don’t think they could if they wanted to. In the end, the men of this campus and the world at large abuse and pollute not only the designated areas, but indeed, every surface of public bathrooms with wanton disregard for the cleaning crews and their fellow man. Not until we can improve our own behavior, and start to respect ourselves, can we expect an upgrade to the Elysian Fields of working taps, stalls with doors and floors free of minefields of human detritus.
I issue a plea to the men of Georgetown and the wider community: You may have been socialized into many other forms of intolerable or unevolved behavior, but by the time you have reached an institute of higher learning, you have likely deduced that the urinals exist for a reason, and those handles on the top of the toilets? Yeah, they flush when you push them! So please, let’s make a concerted effort to improve our community spaces for ourselves and generations of Hoyas to come. First the WC, then the world!
Ian Bourland is a junior in the School of Foreign Service and associate editor of the Georgetown Voice. Like a fine wine, he improves with age.
