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• What a building’s bathroom says about its personality

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Undergraduate Library »
Address: 1402 W. Gregory Drive Urbana, IL 61801
Phone: (217) 333-3477
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C.O. Daniels »
Address: 608 E. Daniel Champaign, IL 61820
Phone: (217) 337-7411
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English Building »
Address: 608 S. Wright St. Urbana, IL 61801
Phone:
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The UI campus boasts handfuls of historic and new buildings, each with a different purpose and backstory. During a campus tour, the tour guide rattles off facts, overwhelming and enlightening potential freshmen. When you’re actually a student on the UI campus though, you learn there is much more to the building than the year it was built: You know which buildings have AC, how many flights of stairs you’re climbing to class, where the best water fountains are and which bathrooms are (or aren’t) stellar. A bathroom can tell you a lot about a building. It can tell you what kind of establishment the building represents and even the personality of the building.

The Undergraduate Library, the English building and C.O. Daniel’s are the three establishments whose bathrooms I chose to explore. I realize these are random choices, but interestingly enough, these bathrooms did indeed reveal a lot of personality.

The Undergraduate Library (the UGL) was built in 1969, and the bathroom looks as if it hasn’t been touched since opening day. The worn and rusty door to the women’s restroom is the first sign that what lies behind the door is just as scary as what is on it. The UGL is a pretty dreary, sad place to begin with, and the bathroom is just the same.

The cream-colored tile appeared to have yellow patches along the floor and was in need of a facelift. The dim fluorescent lights cast an eerie glow over the entire bathroom that resembled a horror movie. Three out of the four lights hanging from the ceiling were working, but the fourth one was flickering on and off accompanied by a low hum. But libraries are filled with horror and anxiety, so it would only be fitting for the bathroom to mock the same idea.

“I usually do my studying at the UGL,” Val Popper, a junior in the College of Media, said. “The bathroom is kind of creepy, but then again so is an underground library.”

One can’t help but feel suffocated in the UGL and its bathroom. The most comical thing I uncovered in the restroom was the ceiling tile. Some tiles looked they were stained from leaks and dust. Above the handicap stall were two black, dusty handprints stamped on the ceiling. I wondered where these handprints came from. Did they belong to a girl who felt so smothered by the stale air of books and the dingy feel of that bathroom that she just had to get out? But that’s a different story.

A library can be an eerie place; an underground library with underground bathrooms can be even eerier.

The next bathroom I reviewed was in the English building. The English building houses many literature classes filled with classic novels, poems and lots of words. Ironically enough, its bathrooms are also filled with lots of words.

“There’s writing all over the stalls,” Erica Larivee, a senior in LAS, said. “But it’s not phone numbers or rumors; it’s insightful quotes and passages. ”

Of course, the English building bathrooms would be filled with words. I peeked in each stall of the women’s first floor bathroom and read every word written on the white marble walls and wooden doors.

One of the passages read, “You must stay drunk on writing so that reality cannot destroy you,” by Ray Bradbury. Another was, “In three words, I can sum up everything I learned about life: It goes on,” by Robert Frost.

What is really quite unintentionally artistic about these passages written on the stalls is the variety of ways the passages are written. Some passages were written in pen, which looked faded and hard to read. Some passages were written in cursive with thick black marker. Some were written in caps in bright colored ink, and some were etched in the panels of the wooden stall doors.

The bathroom is filled with words and ideas just like the English building. If anything, the bathrooms are the culmination of what the English building really embodies.

“I’ve only had one or two classes in the English building,” Jill Salisbury, a junior in LAS, said. “But I’ve never been in a more intelligent bathroom,

to say the least.”

Would the English building expect anything less than intelligent and insightful restrooms? Again, that bathroom further defines the building.

The last bathrooms I briefly explored were those at C.O. Daniel’s (C.O.’s). C.O.’s was renovated this past summer. The bathrooms in the past were dark, smelly, health hazardous and everything bad in between. Now the bathrooms are brightly lit, there’s soap in the dispensers and every stall has a door.

Unfortunately, even with those renovations, somehow that black gunk has found its way back onto the bathroom floor, and the rotten stench has filled the air once again.

Elise Moore, an employee of C.O.’s, said she’s really excited about the renovations, but it’s only been a month, and it’s already going downhill.

“It’s inevitable at a college bar,” she said.

C.O.’s restrooms have been upgraded, just like the rest of the bar. Even though the filth has crept back in, people still flock to Wednesday bomb night and inevitably still use the bathrooms. C.O.’s bathroom is a congregation of sweaty, drunk college kids in a dirty room. C.O.’s and its bathroom go hand in hand.

“Once I peed on the door of the girls’ bathroom,” said a college male in Engineering, who prefers to remain anonymous. “I don’t remember it, though.”

The bathrooms at the UGL, the English building and C.O.’s say a lot about the buildings themselves. The next time you walk into a bathroom, look around and ask yourself — what is this bathroom saying about this building? You’ll be surprised at how much personality you can find.