Let’s expose the elephant in the room right away: This is an absurd topic for an Opinion piece and due to its gross nature, I’m going to try my best to not turn this into a joke article, even though “Students Hold Forum on Better Bowel Movements” could easily be a Pipe Bomb headline in a few weeks. The issue of taking better BMs and the lack of attention paid to it by the University is indicative of a larger sense of neglect for basic physiological needs.
In other words, a student body can’t reach its full potential if everyone is busy scratching his or her raw behind all day. In fact, this issue is so widespread that everyone that I’ve spoken to, people of all walks of life, agrees that after doing their business on campus, they have raw backsides. Even as I discussed the nature of this article in line for New York Deli, a random student preemptively thanked me for my brave reporting in the fight to stop Itchy Butt Syndrome (IBS) at Binghamton University once and for all. And the key to stopping IBS starts with toilet paper.
There are many problems with the school’s choice of toilet paper. First of all, it is very flimsy, which is cause to use a lot of toilet paper with each toilet use. The second issue is the lack of absorbency in the toilet paper, which, after a messy BM, leads to many, many wipes. This wouldn’t be a problem if the toilet paper was comfortable to use. Instead the students are left with what one would expect is one-ply with the texture of tree bark and the strength of tracing paper. This lethal combination leads to butthole lacerations, the leading cause of IBS.
A thought recently occurred to me. Why doesn’t the school switch to two-ply? The problem is that BU already uses two-ply. I went to the bathroom to do some follow-up research. When I pulled the paper out of the roll, the layers separated in front of my eyes. With consistency like that, it’s practically like using two sheets of one-ply toilet paper. It’s time the school makes the shift to genuine two-ply toilet paper. Let’s get #Real2PlyOrDie trending.
This seems like a menial problem on paper, but like we all learned in kindergarten, everyone poops, and a lot of people do it on campus. Why would the University ignore such an essential aspect of the human condition? At this point, if anyone still thinks that this article is stupid, I invite them, nay, challenge them to eat a Wholly Habanero quesadilla and drink a Melvyn’s Dark Roast. In a half-hour, carry this article with you to the nearest bathroom so you can stare at my smug headshot while you wipe with what might as well be tinfoil.
So, yes it’s true that this space could be used for a more important issue, such as the overpopulation of campus which leads to an unavailability of resources ranging from parking spaces to Pods, the frighteningly dangerous OCCT nightmare Downtown on weekend nights, how Sodexo is essentially a monopoly or literally anything besides pooping. But wars are won in battles, and I implore the student body to treat this like a battle we can win. Tweet #2PlyOrDie to @BinghamtonU and let’s end IBS together.