What the flush? A look at SJSU's bathrooms

by Francisco James Rendon, Daniel Aguilar, and Anastasia Crosson Dec 8, 2011 9:46 am

While SJSU’s bathrooms are not necessarily the bottom of the barrel, students on campus have been eager unload their opinions of the school’s bathrooms.

Senior counseling major Amanda Sandoval said she was on the fence in terms of how she felt about the bathrooms, weighing positives and negatives.

Sandoval said she understood there were lots of bathrooms on campus and didn’t really find them dirty, but sometimes just lacking certain amenities she had grown to expect.

“The bathrooms are not dirty, but many times they don’t have soap,” she said. “They have toilet paper but sometimes they don’t have seat covers.”

While not filthy, Sandoval said this lack of proper resources made the found the quality of the bathrooms at SJSU poor.

“The toilet paper is thin, and if there are paper towels they’re really thin too,” she said.

“I think the bathrooms are different from building to building.” Junior engineering Adan Giron said. “In my experience the bathrooms have usually been clean. I haven’t had any problems with them, especially the ones in the engineering building.”

Although he had mostly positive experiences, Giron said there were some areas the bathrooms could improve in.

“All the bathrooms at SJSU are old, and they probably need to be remodeled,” he said. “Everything is old on campus, but the bathrooms look really outdated throughout the school. If its number one, I’ll use the bathrooms on campus, if it’s number two I’ll think about it and maybe walk home.”

Of the eight students interviewed, four said that they found the bathrooms to be outdated and two said they found the bathrooms to be regularly dirty.

When it came to putting the facilities to actual use, students were approximately split evenly faced with the question "Should I stay or should I go?"

Giron was not the only one who said he would consider holding it before using any old restroom on campus.

Senior history major Ben Hurtado said it was ultimately a crapshoot as to how one would end up when nature calls.

“The bathrooms vary from building to building,” he said. “To the eye they look clean, but most of them have that smell that they have not been cleaned in a while.

“I would say over all, the bathrooms are usable, but they need a lot of work. If it’s an emergency though, I would use the restrooms.”

Frank Cariglio, a senior public relations major said he was disgusted with the bathrooms at SJSU and had very high standards as to which throne he adorned.

“I think the majority of the bathrooms are filthy,” he said. “There are the select few that are clean. I’m very selective with what pot I sit on.”

Cariglio said he has several bathrooms that he favors, for emergency situations, but has been turned off to using random ones because of past experiences.

“I have two particular bathrooms I use, but those are the only ones I’ll go into,” he said. “The bathrooms in Dudley Moorhead are horrible, those are the worst ones.”

He said he has seen homeless people in the restrooms and encountered individuals bathing themselves within the facilities at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library.

Sophomore history major Mark Garcia said he thinks the bathrooms are outdated.

“I’ve mostly been in DMH and Sweeney, but the bathrooms are old,” he said. “I think they need to be remodeled, especially for us being in Silicon Valley…If it’s an emergency I won’t use the bathrooms. I’ll usually just wait and go home. “

Sophomore communications major Evelyn Lemos said she also found the bathrooms to be dated.

“The bathrooms are so old,” she said. “They should have the automatic faucets and eco friendly hand dryers, things like that but they don’t.”

Lemos said she doesn’t think cleanliness is an issue, but mainly just how old the restrooms are in general.

However, she said the business building has more modern bathrooms, but she also found them dirtier than others that she has seen.

Sophomore communications major Maria Vasques said she finds all the bathrooms on campus distasteful and unappealing, not only because of age but largely because of failures of different aspects of the facilities to properly function aesthetically or practically.

“I think the bathrooms are ugly,” she said “They’re always broken, theirs always something wrong…”

Vasques said she saw a homeless person using the facilities on SJSU grounds and the experience deterred her from using the restrooms at SJSU in the future.

“I’ve actually seen a homeless person in a bathroom once,” she said. “It was after a night class, and I was always scared to go back to those bathrooms.”

She also said there is rarely soap available in the bathrooms she has visited, and graffiti is also often on the walls.

Vasquez said she was surprised at the amount of vandalism in the girl's bathrooms.

“They scratch the paint on the wall, so they can’t take it off," she said. “Its surprising how dirty the girl’s restrooms can get.”

“That got me thinking that maybe the bathrooms in the school are not too safe.”

Sophomore journalism major Gonzalo Rey said there is variance as to how the cans stack up.

“Some of the bathrooms are nice,” he said. “The ones in the history building are nasty. They’re dirty and really old. They look like they’ve never been updated.”
Rey also said he was dissatisfied with the antibacterial soap available for students’ use.

“There is that pink soap in there, but its not really effective and it smells bad,“ he said. “If I really have to go I won’t use the ones in the History Building, I’ll just go in some other building.”

Sidebar:The King of All Bathrooms

Anastasia Crosson, Spartan Daily

Rey later contradicted his earlier quotation by saying “I wouldn’t say any of the bathrooms on campus are “nice”, but most are somewhat clean and useable.”

None of the students interviewed expressed more than a moderate amount of enthusiasm towards the restrooms at SJSU.

Anastasia Crosson[ /media-credit]