A men’s bathroom sign as a lighthouse silhouette. Illustration by Bianca Oppedisano (She/Her) / Mass Media Staff.

There’s a growing problem on our campus. A monster that’s laid dormant in the shadows for years, growing fatter and fatter in its quest to consume every ounce of moral decency we have left while gorging itself on the scattered remains of our fragmented society. I’ve been forced to watch helplessly from the sidelines over the course of my many years at this university, but I cannot bear to stand by any longer. It’s time for us to address the issue—the bathroom issue.

You see, I’ve been called the Gordan Ramsay of bathrooms by my peers and contemporaries. I’m a true connoisseur of all things restroom related. I have strict standards and a particular taste for quality. I live and breathe this stuff—I’ve got that bathroom blood flowing deep in my veins. I’m only joking about that last part, but what’s not a joke is the absolutely disgraceful state of the bathroom etiquette at our school. Let me tell you a little story.

You sulk your way into a Campus Center bathroom. You’ve had a terrible day, the worst day imaginable. So, when you see that your favorite stall is open, you rejoice. Maybe there is a point to your existence. Maybe there is a God. You walk in, close the door and drop your pants to the floor. You know what you’re doing, this isn’t your first rodeo. But when you sit down, you immediately feel an unwelcome moisture on your butt cheeks, and you come to a startling revelation. There is no point to life. God is dead; we killed him. You just sat in a puddle of someone else’s piss!

I think I’m speaking for a lot of guys at this school when I say that I am sick and tired of wiping the urine of a strange man off the toilet seat whenever I want to drop a deuce. Enough is enough! I’ve never understood why the aim of some men is so terrible. First of all, if you are one of those guys who—for whatever reason—don’t want to use a urinal, then sit down! There’s no shame in that! Or at the very least, have the decency to put the toilet seat up.

Sometimes, the piss isn’t even just on the seat—it’s everywhere! It’s on the walls, it’s on the floor, it’s burnt into my eyeballs like a traumatic memory that I can’t forget even after months of therapy and a visit to a medicinal healer in the mountains of Tibet. Like, I don’t understand! How many holes do you have in your penis? It’s like a Nerf Super Soaker! You walk in there, pump it up a few times and unleash an unholy spray of urinary shrapnel like you’re f—ing Rambo.

Then there’s the issue of toilet paper. Now, toilet paper is for wiping your a—, everybody knows this. But here’s a pro tip: When you’re done wiping your a—, it goes in the toilet! Hence the name “toilet paper.” It’s not uncommon to find toilet paper all over the floor in the men’s room. For some reason, it’s something that guys like to do. However, when that toilet paper is smeared with streaks of brown, I take issue.

Of course, I’ll never forget the time I found a copy of The Mass Media opened to one of my articles, sitting on the bathroom floor and stained with fecal matter. Someone had literally wiped their a— with my name. At least somebody found worth in me.

So, as you can see, the problem of human indecency is certainly at play when it comes to UMass Boston’s bathroom issue; however, there are times when that indecency originates from the porcelain throne itself.

The motion sensors in the toilets are completely unpredictable. It’s like sitting on top of a ticking time bomb. Of course, each toilet has its own distinct personality, and with enough experience, you’ll learn the nuances of each one, but Jesus Christ! For some of them, you walk into the stall and it flushes five times before you even sit down. Make one false move and you’ll have the forces of the Yellowstone super-volcano blasting you in the a— with dirty, disgusting toilet water. A surprise to be sure, and an unwelcome one at that.

What really behooves me, though, is how in certain bathrooms, it seems that one stall is always occupied. Like, these people never leave, and if you listen in, you don’t hear pooping, you don’t hear peeing, you hear the sound of fingers rap-tap-tapping on a keyboard. They’re turning these dingy bathroom stalls into their own personal offices. I imagine they have little houseplants in there, a tiny desktop fan to keep them cool and a framed picture on the wall of their latest trip to Disney World with the fam. Mickey Mouse staring down at them as they sit butt-naked over a festering pile of their own feces while zooming into class. What a world!

Sometimes I’m just minding my own business when all of a sudden, I hear a sound in the adjacent stall that could only be described as someone tenderizing a piece of meat. Now, the heavy breathing and awkward grunting leads me to believe that it’s not a chicken cutlet. Guys. Seriously? Can we not go a single day without rubbing the rooster? Without twisting the toad? Without vandalizing the viola? Has this cruel world made us so sad and depraved that we can’t show restraint in public restrooms? Come on guys! We can be better than this!

Men’s bathrooms stand as a testament to how disgusting guys can truly be. Believe me, I’m a guy. I too, walk the way. If I go into a bathroom and see one of my brethren sitting with their butt in a urinal taking a crap, I’ll look them in the eye and we’ll say in unison, “This is the way.” It’s a fact of life, a part of nature. Boys being boys. Right?

Wrong! No! This is unacceptable behavior, and it’s time for a change. It’s time to show some human decency, to show some respect for the people who lay their personal hygiene on the line every day to clean up our literal s—. I’m talking about our wonderful custodial staff who, without them, our university would be a rotting cesspit of filth and disarray. So next time you whip out your weenie to take a pee-pee on the bathroom floor, think about the person who’s going to have to clean it up.