Toilets of Higher Education

A urinal (and condom machine) in Magdalene College, Oxford University, Oxford, U.K.

The mysterious Secret Staff Toilet in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA.

It's room ECE 126, directly across from one entry to the large lecture hall in ECE 129. The building key (coded "EBSMA") which opens all the exterior doors also admits you to its retro and very plain interior.

Just like the nuclear reactor in the basement, the Secret Staff Restroom does not appear on the building maps.

Meanwhile, Purdue has some of the worst urinals in the world.

At left is an example from from the Potter engineering building, and below is a slightly different though still terrible design in the Physics building.

Beyond the pure mystification factor (what are these things, seatless toilets?), they combine the worst of several possible features:

• Extra-high water use per flush
• Unusually high placement and large water bowl maximizes splash-back
• Privacy? What's that?

Purdue's Undergraduate Research Library is similarly plagued.

The Triple XXX diner is a popular local spot in West Lafayette, just down the hill from the Purdue campus. "On the hill, but on the level", they say.

The classic dish there is the biscuits and gravy. Below is the notorious Full Order.

It's open 24 hours and is next to a university campus, so it gets pretty hard use. This isn't exactly a campus toilet, but Triple XXX is close enough to being a part of the Purdue campus to qualify. During a recent visit, the men's room was "out of service." I'm sure we didn't want to know the details. Here is the relatively nice women's.

This is the mens room at the west end of the Infinite Hallway. It's room 7-107 in the Rogers Building at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

One mens room in the Peabody Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

A fairly high-tech urinal in the park adjacent to the campus of Cambridge University. The hand-washing water flushes it, and there is a (nearly hidden) hot-air hand drier also built in.

Not handicap-accessible, so this is not Steven Hawking's. (He is on the faculty there, in the position once held by Isaac Newton)

Also see the High-Tech Toilet page.

Handicap-accessible toilets:
Right this way

GIANT-ACCESSIBLE TOILETS:
Also right this way

On the campus of Cambridge University.
Also see the Toiletological Signage page.

Rose George's The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters is a fascinating description of sanitation conditions around the world. "2.6 billion people don't have sanitation. [....] Four in ten people have no access to any latrine, toilet, bucket, or box. [....] Poor sanitation, bad hygiene, and unsafe water — usually unsafe because it has fecal particles in it — cause one in ten of the world's illnesses. [....] Diarrhea — nearly 90 percent of which is caused by fecally contaminated food or water — kills a child every fifteen seconds. The number of children who have died from diarrhea in the last decade [1998-2008] exceeds the total number of people killed by armed conflict since the Second World War.

In September 2009, Morna Gregory and Sian James published a book titled Toilets of the World. It's pretty much the same theme that you find here — photographs and commentary on other people's plumbing.

The Porcelain God: A Social History of the Toilet, by Julie Horan, contends that civilization began with the toilet.

Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Laura Noren and Harvey Molotch, has essays by anthropologists, sociologists, and architects on the importance of the toilet, especially for urban dwellers.

Latrinae Et Foricae: Toilets in the Roman World describes the toilets of the Roman Empire from Iberia to Syria, and from North Africa to Hadrian's Wall in Britannia.

Toilets, Bathtubs, Sinks, and Sewers: A History of the Bathroom, explains the history of personal cleanliness and hygiene to children in grades 5-8.

If you're not bored yet, you might be interested in (or at least tolerate):

• Travel suggestions
• To Bob's main site