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Wash Your Hands in Celebration, Yalies

FRIDAY JANUARY 27 2006 10:00 PM

Submitted by MissTyrios. Edited By MissTyrios.

I lived in dorms for four years of college. I endured communal, and sometimes coed, bathrooms. But at least my school supplied us with soap. Yes, it seems to be a given - put soap next to the sink in dorm bathrooms just as there is in every restaurant, movie theatre, and any other place where people pee in civilization. However, students at the storied Yale University are celebrating this month because the school has finally agreed to give them soap for some of their their dorm bathrooms. Apparently, the $100K a year that it would cost the school to give their dirty, dirty undergrads some basic liquid hand soap had heretofore been deemed too much of a strain on their $15 billion endowment. And oh yeah, it had become "traditional" for there to be no soap. I'm sure the germs appreciated it.

In addition to fretting about the cost, some university officials worried the dispensers would damage historic architecture in the bathrooms, according to the student-run Yale Daily News.

"At the time, it was a complete head-scratcher. It seemed completely obvious," said James Ponsoldt, a 2001 graduate who spoke this week from the Sundance Film Festival, where a movie he directed premiered. "It's pretty gross to not have soap in the bathrooms."

Tradition also was a factor. Generations of Yale undergraduates, including the current and former Presidents Bush, lived without university-supplied soap.

"I think the main reason there aren't soap dispensers is because there never have been soap dispensers," Dean of Administrative Affairs John Meeske told the campus newspaper in 1997.

Students coped by pitching in to buy soap. Parents contributed. Soap became a communal responsibility.

In 1997, student leaders appealed to a higher power: John Pepper, then a member of Yale's governing corporation, and chairman of Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble, which makes Ivory, Olay and Zest soap. But Pepper said the university could not figure out how to make it work affordably.

"I think it's great that people have soap," Pepper said in a telephone interview this week. "I'm a big supporter of soap."

I, too, am a big supporter of soap. Go Yale.

11 Comments

BurningKrome

San Jose, CA

April 2005

JAN 27, 2006 10:11 PM

I'm a big supporter of soap too. But my college never provided soap. You bought your own damn soap...and shampoo, toothpaste, deoderant. Fuck. Have a little hygene.

I could have gone for the co-ed bathrooms though. Tough choice...but, if forced to choose, definitely co-ed bathrooms :-)

alpha_hazard

Fort Collins, CO

April 2004

JAN 27, 2006 10:20 PM

BurningKrome said:
I'm a big supporter of soap too. But my college never provided soap. You bought your own damn soap...and shampoo, toothpaste, deoderant. Fuck. Have a little hygene.

I could have gone for the co-ed bathrooms though. Tough choice...but, if forced to choose, definitely co-ed bathrooms :-)

Well, you know, those liquid hand soap containers have a tendency to leak...not that bar soap doesn't do the job...unless you've got sensitive skin.

The point is, you don't want to be grabbing your toiletry bag or carrying soap every time you head to the john, so it's nice to have it available right there.

jasonzot

Brooklyn, NY

OLD SKOOL

JAN 27, 2006 10:27 PM

Even the filthiest of gas stations provide soap--even if it's that toxic pink powder. Even UC Santa Cruz has soap in the bathrooms...they just have filthy hippies, but at least they have a choice.

SirPsychoSexy

Ridgewood, NJ

January 2004

JAN 28, 2006 12:13 AM

I always just figured they scrubbed up with the powdered bones of the dammed.

askdylan

I'm lost

May 2005

JAN 28, 2006 12:14 AM

The poor Yale students and their destitute parents! Pitching in to buy communal soap.

MightyTick

Albany, NY

December 2005

JAN 28, 2006 12:53 AM

The university could not figure out how to make it work affordably?
What the fuck!
Mc Donalds has figured it out! WalMart has figured it out! Hell even the community college I went to figured it out!
Well when and if any of us have to shake hands with a Yale grad, better wash our hands after!

MaryCeleste

I'm lost

September 2004

JAN 28, 2006 04:40 AM

When your budget for soap has always been zero then it is hard to figure out how to make it work afforably. Going from zero to anything is much less afforable. They will have to cut back the budget of the bone grinding of the damned club.

Serragengar

United Kingdom

November 2004

JAN 28, 2006 12:40 PM

I have the good fortune to be in co-ed accomodation at the moment, and for our bathroom needs, we don't even get toilet paper, let alone soap.

_schmoe

Lowell, MA

November 2003

JAN 28, 2006 02:25 PM

BurningKrome said:
I could have gone for the co-ed bathrooms though. Tough choice...but, if forced to choose, definitely co-ed bathrooms :-)

personaly i wouldn't want that cutie down the hall to have any knowledge of the evil spewed from my bowels after a cafateria meal even for the oportunity of seeing co-ed showering/nakedness in said bathroom.

FrankMask

Saint Paul, MN

June 2003

JAN 28, 2006 04:48 PM

So the next time anyone tries to pull anything on you because they graduated from Yale and you didn't you can bring this up before you tell them to sit down and shut up.

On the subject of Co-ed bathrooms I think I'd be for it, on the grounds that I'm pretty sure that at least some of the women on any given floor would be willing to bloodily murder anyone who violated the cleanliness of the restroom.