ASU President Michael Crow is hell-bent on making ASU a "Research One" University, and maybe that's not such a bad thing. We might not get ripped on by The Simpsons anymore. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Ivy League.
Last week while strolling through the MU I had to use the restroom. So I headed upstairs because my logic was, "since fewer people are on the second floor, the restroom is probably less used and thus, it might be cleaner than the ones downstairs."
It seemed logical at the time. But upon entering I noticed something disturbing: bathroom stalls without those pesky doors.
It was like being in an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," specifically the one where a house didn't have a lock on the bathroom door. It was 30 minutes of hilarity. But the episode was funny because it happened to someone else and wasn't in real life.
This, though, happened to me, and it's probably happening to dozens of other ASU students every day.
The restroom problem is just a small part of the bigger picture, the fact that it's nice to give speeches and hold expensive galas proclaiming that the University will raise admission standards, raise tuition and turn us into a "Research One" university, but there are simple, little things that are going ignored.
Say what you want about budget cuts, but I refuse to believe that someone cut restroom doors out of the budget.
It is just a matter of time before some unfortunate student chooses not to use the stall without a door, holds it in, spontaneously combusts, and the University is sued for an exorbitant amount of money by the person's grieving family, all because ASU neglected to give him or her due privacy.
This is a problem that I've never come across on the Harvard or MIT campuses. (Yeah, I've been there; shocking, I know.) If we want to be a "Research One" university, we might want to start in the restroom.
I've heard a lot of people wonder where our extra thousand dollars, or thereabouts, is going to go next year, and I have a suggestion. I haven't the foggiest clue how much a public restroom door costs - it's not something I shop for often - but it can't be much. How about we do a little research on that!
And this MU situation was not an isolated incident. The men's restroom near the computer lab in the basement of the business building has the same problem, as does the upstairs restroom in the Matthews Center.
Does this happen in women's restrooms on campus too? We could boycott using the restrooms, but it would be futile because since we are not charged anything to use them, it really wouldn't hit ASU where it counts: in the wallet.
So my suggestion to President Crow is to begin making his way around campus, trying out various restrooms with and without doors, and come to a decision on just how important this issue is. I have a hunch he has very little personal experience with this situation.
I'm sure this is not the biggest, most pressing problem on campus, but it is a problem nonetheless. We need smaller class sizes. We need to keep top professors on campus rather than allowing them to go elsewhere. It would probably be to our benefit to have libraries and computer labs open 24 hours.
But what we certainly need and can easily afford are doors on our restroom stalls.
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Gregory Salvatore is a broadcast journalism senior. Reach him at gregory.salvatore@asu.edu.
