Silly But Necessary: The Ranking of Stalls in the Myrin Women’s Bathroom

An anonymous Senior

I have always been a second floor dweller in Myrin Library. It
is arguably the best floor in the library, but that is not what I am here to argue about today. What I want to argue today is that the stalls in this bathroom are not all equal – they have an unspoken hierarchy. Here are my rankings of the Women’s stalls:

The stall closest to the windows comes in at number four – last in the row, and last on my list. It is too far away from the door, and when studying, I try to mitigate the amount of time I am using in between a bathroom study break. Additionally, there have been multiple occasions, not just for me, when the toilet in this stall has neglected to flush. I am already freaking out about the paper I am writing in the cubicles, and the toilet not flushing is an added stressor. There are also at least three disgruntled wasps lying in the corner of the stall, not dead, but alive enough for their desperate crawling to freak you out. Therefore, stall number four comes in last in the Myrin Pyramid of Stalls.

In third place, the first stall closest to the door is not dead last, but close enough. I feel like this is the stall everyone goes into psychologically because no one wants to use this one because they think everyone uses this one. However, on the other hand I cannot help but feel that almost everyone uses it! The stall also simply does not lock, and it just adds another step to simply using the restroom: holding the door closed.

In second place, the second stall. I do not use this stall all the time because, once again, psychologically I feel that everyone will skip over the first stall and use the second one. The second stall rarely has a full roll of toilet paper, which leads me to believe that my first point
is not imagined. The second stall just does not have anything special about it – it is simply average. There are only two dead wasps in front of the stall usually so just a quick step over and a closed door takes you to the porcelain god.

In first, the third stall. It’s clean, the door locks, and the toilet flushes. It meets the bare minimum for your toilet expectations. Not much needed to say about this one because it checks off all the boxes the other three stalls do not.

Honestly, I expected better from a historic library like Myrin. I am well aware we cannot have Ivy League toilets like Harvard or Yale, but given the prestige of Ursinus, where I sit in between my studies matters to me.