Ernest Reid
Science & Technology Editor
Like fellow night owls, I am hugely disappointed to discover the Accolade West (ACW), Accolade East (ACE), and Fine Arts Building are now locked at night. The ACW is a wonderful place to wander through after dark—I will miss its calming orange and green colour scheme and avoiding the (potential) muggers and rapists on the way to the Pond Road parking lot. But most of all, I will miss using that gender-neutral bathroom at night.
I hope the rest of the student body understands what a great bathroom the ACW has. It is always clean and fully stocked. The roominess is like none other. A space that is conducive to my urinary and/or bowel functions. When I’m there after a midnight study session, I feel like I’m pooping in first class. Consequently, it’s a competitive space. With over 55,000 students during the day, it’s only at night that I can appreciate York’s excellence in bathroom design.
But York has taken that away from you and me. For the last four years, this university provided a grade A experience in waste disposal, now that’s gone. This university can put a curfew on our learning, they can legislate where we can and cannot study, where we can and cannot walk, but I refuse to let them tell me where I can and cannot urinate.
York can set business hours for our education—I have no problem with that—but they cannot set hours for our defecation.
York media says the buildings are locked for student safety. To be fair, I do feel much safer walking in the outside when it’s dark than walking inside. After all, a mugger might be hiding in the corner obscured by the soft lighting. An attacker might hear my courtesy flush and lie in wait.
I will admit that the detour through ACE, ACW, and the Fine Arts Building takes longer to get home. Waiting 45 minutes for the Village shuttle in the dark or walking past the shady alleyways of the Village are faster and safer ways of getting home.
But the Village shuttle means I’ll have to hold it and I refuse to let York subjugate and police my body that way. The nightly closure of these buildings is a just another example of York’s oppressive regulation of our rectums and bladders. These borders set down by the academic-industrial complex hurt, and nothing hurts me more than constipation.
York’s safety infrastructure is always trying to improve. The nightly locking of these buildings is a patchwork solution to a greater problem. If York can’t provide us a safe space for nocturnal learning and walking, then at least they can provide a safe space for pooping.
