Alexander Colle | Sports Editor
Featured illustration | Jasmine Wiradharma
For years, I’ve hated going to York washrooms—and no, it isn’t my bathroom insecurity getting the best of me, nor is it the reek coming from the walls (looking at you, Student Centre). The washrooms here are dirty, but I managed to get past the permanent stains that have found a home on floors (hello, South Ross). No, no, no. It isn’t any of these issues.
The reason I hate going to York’s washrooms is that whenever I decide to go into the stall to do my business, I have nothing to use but a half-ply strip of toilet paper. I mean, come on—is it even toilet paper at that point, it feels more like tracing paper.
Where do they get this, the Visual Arts department?
Holding this paper in my hand, I can actually see through it and clearly trace the outline of my hand—if I can see through to my hand, that only means one thing: holes. Millions of microscopic holes that act as the only barrier between my hand and my—you get the idea.
Also don’t get me started on the effectiveness of the material—I have to use half the roll to even consider the job done!
Don’t York students deserve better? Sure, I could bring up the,“I pay a specific amount every year to attend this school” argument, but it’s not even that.
It genuinely hurts that someone up there in Kaneff Tower decided that students deserve see-through paper as a means for regular hygiene in our washrooms. The fact that York needed to save an extra few thousand dollars a year to not add toilet paper that reaches even one-ply just stings, physically and emotionally.
Undoubtedly, York does have the money; they receive thousands of dollars’ worth of tuition every year, and can certainly pay for toilet paper that can finish the job after a visit to Popeyes.
If they can’t deliver on a full-ply material that is used to clean ourselves, why should they expect us to hand in full-ply material to our professors?
So, Yorkies, I hereby encourage you to rise from this moment on. Yes, here today, I am beginning a new manifesto at our university. We students deserve a material thicker than the half-ply toilet paper we’re given in our bathroom stalls. We students deserve a washroom experience that rewards us for the stresses that university life puts on us. We students deserve better.
If we don’t fight, we’re going to continue to use a material that is nothing but one thing: a pain in the ass.
