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Last week I walked into 4200 Valley Drive at the University of Maryland in search of a safe, presentable, and hygienic restroom. Much to my surprise, much to my consternation, and much to my constipation, I found that all of the restrooms at this so-called School of Public Health were disgustingly unclean and unsanitary. (The men’s rooms, anyway. I only checked those, but I assume my generalizations to be safe.)

By comparison, I had just walked through the Eppley Recreation Center next door. You can kinda just do that, by the way. Any random fool can just waltz in, stand in front of the big windows, and stare people down while they pump iron or practice their breaststroke. Do with that information what you will so long as you don’t say you learned it from me. More importantly, the restrooms there are clean.

You would expect the commodes where people work out to smell like a fire sale at the sweat shop and look twice as salty, right? Eppley’s looked just fine, and in fact, all of them were actively being cleaned at once when I got there. That’s UMD timing if I’ve ever seen it. This all forced my hand (and my ass) out the door toward SPH to seek an alternate place of alleviation. Surely the bastion of biological well-being would bolster up beautiful bathrooms?

Every facility I checked in there had figurative ordure overlain on the walls and mirrors, literal ordure still supine in the toilet bowls, nary even one paper towel to endeavor to deterge the space with, and also just a really bad smell that I didn’t like. Both my buttocks and I were desperate by the time we reached the last unexamined restroom, so I went to the one toilet stall that hadn’t collapsed on itself and performed my signature Jimmy Dour-Handel “jimmy” of the door handle. It wouldn’t open, and no one barked “occupied” at me. Turns out it wasn’t locked; it was literally just molded shut.

It’s terrible. Not only does the most viable “commuter rest stop” for people parking in Terrapin Trail Garage have a bathroom cleanliness level no higher than an actual highway rest stop (not that those macho-man four-wheeled fucks aren’t used to that or anything), but it’s an absolute embarrassment to the University’s “health” major to have their bathrooms in the worst possible state of healthiness.

I pray for their sake that it’s simply because no one’s made them aware yet. It’ll be even more of a farce for them if they know about it but elect not to do anything about it and just pretend they’re still “healthy”. Will I be spreading the word of this until the problem is addressed? Well, does a bear shit in the woods? The answer is yes, and so am I at the moment since that’s somehow a more sanitary place to do it right now than the School of Public Health. The commuters are laughing at me from their vantage points in TTG and yelling things like “the sign says no dumping, buddy.” Go ahead, it doesn’t change the fact that if we pedestrians collide with a car on our way to class, we just die. The heavenbound don’t have to file insurance claims. Suck it.