Last Wednesday, I attended the first Rose Cafe of the semester. I am glad that I went, for it was really interesting! While most of my friends at Rose have complained at some point about the bathrooms in the buildings that they lived in, I never expected the topic to come up during a Rose Cafe. Throughout my time at Rose, I have experienced a variety of problems with the bathrooms. From my own experiences, I have found that most of the problems can fit into one of three categories:

1. Lack of Cleanliness: This can be further split between general lack of cleanliness (due to infrequent cleaning) and more specific cases of people not cleaning up after themselves. The first problem is typically due to the fact that the bathrooms are only cleaned twice a week–which, at least for women, is too infrequent. While I understand it may be difficult to correct this problem, I think that it is important that it is done. The second problem is far harder to resolve, as it involves the behavior of individual students. My floor had this problem throughout all of last year, and, despite all of our efforts, it never was resolved.
2. Maintenance Problems: This is probably a bigger problem in the Gothics than in Rose Main, since, as Professor Blalock explained at the Cafe, the Gothics are in dire need for renovation. Due to the recent recession, the buildings never received the attention that they desperately need. Unfortunately, this will not be happening anytime soon, so for now the best that can be done is to have anything broken repaired as quickly as possible. If something breaks, send in a maintenance request, and it should soon be fixed. Unless, of course, the situation is severe–such as if a toilet will not stop flushing (this actually happened to me). Then you should probably contact a GRF immediately.
3. Lack of Supplies: Honestly, I think this should be the easiest problem to correct–how hard can it be to restock supplies? Part of the problem is again due to the infrequent bathroom maintenance. One solution (for toilet paper at least) that I have often seen is for extra rolls of toilet paper to be left in a pile somewhere in the bathroom. This has proven quite effective at resolving the issue of lack of toilet paper. However it is not always done. A more difficult problem to deal with is a lack of soap. As the soap dispensers in the bathrooms generally last for a few weeks without needing to be refilled, they are not refilled every time the bathrooms are serviced. However, when they do run out, the maintenance staff often does not realize that the need to be refilled. I have experienced several times where it took over a week for the soap to be restocked. It got to the point where I now always keep a bottle of soap in my room for the next time that it happens. Even if the soap was restocked during the cleaning immediately after it ran out, I have had it happen where we ran out of soap a few hours after a cleaning occurred, often four days before it could possibly be refilled. As this was a problem that has annoyed me for some time, I brought it up during the Rose Cafe. This is how I learned that there is something that you can do if you run out of soap. Several options were listed: Going to the House Office (if it is open), speaking to your GRF (if they are around, and if it is at a reasonable time), or filing a maintenance request. This information was completely unknown to me before the Cafe, and it was completely unknown to all of my friends (who have all dealt with the same problem). So spread the word about what the proper procedure is when you run out of soap!

There is one more problem relating to bathrooms that I have noticed: No servicing during breaks and holidays. This happened just recently, over Labor Day weekend. While the bathrooms on my floor are supposed to be cleaned every Monday and Thursday, they were never cleaned on Labor Day. This resulted in us having to go an entire week without having our bathroom cleaned. While I understand that the staff members may want those days off, the bathrooms are still being used. Even if they shifted the schedule for that one week, so that we still received two cleanings, that would have been a better option than just not cleaning at all.

Overall, I have experienced a lot of problems with the bathrooms at Rose, and I was glad for the opportunity to discuss them. At the Cafe, Professor Blalock proposed that we have a discussion with the head of maintenance to further discuss the bathroom issues, which I think would be a great idea. I will certainly be on the look out for it.