There is no comparison to the horror women face when they get lost in New Cabell looking for a female lavatory. Whether you overestimated the level of spiciness in your Lemongrass curry dish or your friends pranked your birthday cookies with ex-lax, if you are a lady in a rush, you are better off finding an open window facing the developing courtyard than a bathroom in the definitively male-built building.
For those who hydrate regularly and are forced to use the bathroom, New Cabell serves as a breeding ground of inconvenience. Even if you are trying to miss a minimal amount of class, the task at hand proves to be much too hard. First, there’s the fact you have to pass everyone on your long and winding trek there. Then, the shock of a stagnant-aired restroom is followed by the slow realization of your equally long journey back to your room. And as you slowly reopen the door back into class, the returning glances of your fellow classmates contain a crafted look of, “It took you that long…?” that can haunt you for years.
On floor one, the male and female bathrooms present themselves as anything but an opportune place to pop a squat. Considering a strip of toilet paper is a rare find in these tiled bathroom terrors, you might as well peer out from behind the door and ask a fellow student in the hall if they happen to carry portable tissues — or a spare pair of underwear. And should you be a bit pee-shy, you should continue on in the search for a better and more prosperous choice of bathrooms — this bathroom is without a lock. You can imagine the discomfort.
The top floor lacks a ladies room completely, while two urinal-filled bathrooms taunt any lady’s bursting bladder. A flight down and on the complete opposite side of the building, there is a door presenting a piece of printing paper with “Ladies” written in black sharpie, but the sheet is almost indistinguishable from the other fliers littering the hallways.
Pushing your way through, you should expect to find a line waiting for this three-stalled bathroom during class changes. The floor — nicely adorned with a weeklong accumulation of fallen toilet paper pieces and other riffraff — exemplifies the high priority of this loo. And to further your excitement, if you do not like hot water, you have come to the right place — none of the nobs produce a trickle of warmth. But who needs hot water to kill germs during flu season or warm up your hands in the middle of winter, anyway?
With two male bathrooms on one floor, it should not be too hard to remove the urinals and turn the bathroom into a place for the ladies. I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to recognize this issue. But for some reason, the topic appears to be a taboo. No one wants to be the first lady to voice her disconcertment about lack of toilets.
So come on, ladies! Rise up and use your voices to turn this building into an equal-gender, bladder-friendly edifice. It is high time Cabell had both a male and a female restroom on each floor of the building.
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