We are rodent-like animals who would be happy to live in holes in the ground.

The women's rooms in the building in which I will soon no longer be spending my sabbatical were once designed after the European toilet model: tiny cramped WCs attached to a larger salle de bain. Unfortunately all the menstrual couches have been removed. When I was an undergrad, the women's restrooms were always great places to study... but I digress.

In a recent renovation, the restrooms in Sabbatical Building were updated, and the WCs were turned into a single handicap-accessible restroom with sink and locking door attached to a larger stalls-and-sinks restroom. I have never seen anyone with a handicap use the handicap restroom, although women from all over the building, from the basement to the top floor, come to use this restroom.

That's right. It's the pooping room. The ladies who need to take a dump charge into this one bathroom (and there are women's rooms on every floor) and close and lock the door behind them. There is a certain unnatural quickness to their steps, due not to urgency but to secrecy. The problem is that everyone knows that the pooping room is for pooping, so women who go into the pooping room must therefore have to poop, and the women who use the pooping room for pooping use it because they don't want anyone to know they are pooping, and yet if they use it, then everyone will know they are pooping. The need for secrecy is so strong that if the room is occupied most women will leave and come back later rather than poop in the stalls.

There is also a hiding factor, left over from our small frightened mammal stage when the act of pooping exposed our ancestors to attack from predators. The large windows in the pooping room are completely covered with opaque contact paper, save for one small corner of approximately 4 square inches that has peeled up on one side. Understand, now, that this large window is far from the toilet, at least 3 meters, and looking through the peeled up corner gives one a view of the roof of the neighboring building. Nonetheless, I have gone into the pooping room many times in the past year to find, most times, that someone has covered up the peeled up corner with something, usually one of those boxes containing a cheap sanitary napkin that the university provides for free.

I find the pooping ritual exhausting, though I grant that the pooping room is quite nice and I do not deny any other woman the opportunity to use it. Being the daughter of small frightened mammals myself, I also feel compelled to poop while hiding. Nonetheless, I gave up on the pooping room long ago in exchange for convenience, and now I poop in the stalls with pride.

You might want to talk to your daughter.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Tetedair,

I am one of your daughter Bete's classmates. I had the pleasure of sitting next to her yesterday, election day. I should point out how delighted I was to have the opportunity to see her, as she rarely attends class.

Your daughter is an international studies major, right? You must be so proud! She is an attractive, polished young lady, and her French is quite lovely. So imagine my surprise when she expressed her boredom and frustration with the topic we were discussing, which concerned terrorism in North Africa.

During our conversation I learned that Bete has "no interest in politics at all." I found this a strange confession for an international studies major. I said, nonplussed, "But of course you're going to vote today," and she, then hostile, reported that she had no intention of doing so.

You know your daughter well, I assume, and so you have no problem with her choosing a major that usually presumes a great deal of interest in politics, both national and international, and paying her tuition and fees. However, you may not realize that our governor, fulfilling a campaign promise, has frozen her tuition and fees for the last four years, and her refusal to vote contributed to his loss in yesterday's election. This means, starting next year when the governor-elect takes over, you will get to pay a lot more for Bete to attend these classes in which she has no interest. She may be relieved to learn, however, that many of those classes will be much, much larger, because we are going to have to cut teaching positions when the governor-elect cuts our budget by 10%, fulfilling his campaign promise. It's so much easier to ditch those larger classes, you know.

I'll let you explain this to her.

Best regards,
Angry Professor