Baylor makes sure to equip the football team with the best gear. The Baylor Science Building has state-of-the-art science equipment. Armstrong Browning Library has beautiful art throughout its halls.
But no bathroom on campus has quality toilet paper.
Picture a student with back-to-back classes. This student is plagued with the task of rushing a trip to the bathroom to get to class on time. This student now has to deal with the nightmare that is one-ply toilet paper.
One-ply toilet paper is a burden for everyone. Few people purchase it to use in their homes, and when they do, they try to avoid making that mistake twice.
The idea behind buying one-ply toilet paper is that it saves money. While a roll of one-ply is cheaper than other thicker, softer options, no money is saved. Two-ply toilet paper is often soft and can do its duty without too much hassle. Few can realistically expect Baylor to provide three-ply toilet paper, the bath tissue of kings, but two-ply is reasonable.
Students that find themselves in the unfortunate situation of using an on-campus bathroom are seldom frugal with their toilet paper usage. Many students pull foot after foot of toilet paper so that the wad (or fold, if you decide to go that route) is thick enough for the job. The last thing anybody wants is to grab too little and get poopy hands.
With thicker toilet paper, students wouldn’t have to spend two full minutes pulling toilet paper from the dispenser. Charmin Ultra taught us that less is more when it comes to thicker toilet paper.
Improving the quality of toilet paper will help improve the university’s image. Nothing can ruin a visitor’s experience quite like a bad bathroom experience. Forcing prospective students and prominent visitors to use toilet paper with the consistency of saw dust and dead grass is inconsiderate if not downright insulting.
Limiting students, faculty and staff to one-ply toilet paper is comparable to forcing journalism majors to use typewriters. The technology has progressed so that the problems of the past can go away for good, but Baylor keeps us in the bathroom Dark Ages.
Software company Nitro commissioned a recent study that suggests that only 6 percent of Americans would be willing to use less toilet paper in order to help save the environment, but 31 percent said that they would give up books. Emphasizing recreational reading is another issue entirely, but the point still remains that Americans don’t mess around when it comes to our toilet paper.
It was 78 years ago that a company called Northern Tissue advertised its “splinter-free” toilet paper. Our condolences go out to anyone that has had to use toilet paper that is not “splinter-free,” but our current one-ply toilet paper is only a small step up.
Two-ply toilet paper was introduced in 1942, but Baylor has not bought in to this just yet.
This slope is slippery. If a company invents half-ply toilet paper, will Baylor purchase that to save money? Dare we comply?
Improving the quality of on-campus toilet paper is serious. Some of us can’t hold it in any longer. Everybody deserves better toilet paper on campus.
