Whenever Benjamin Croner gets a call from Mother Nature, he knows it’s time to break out the checklist.

As his chief line of defense against the perils of backsplash and rim residue, the bathroom code is the only way he can get down to business.

‘First, I pick the cleanest stall and use a little toilet paper to wipe off the seat,’ said Croner, an undecided freshman in The College of Arts and Sciences. ‘Then I paper the seat, and, if it’s a sketchy place, I still hover.’

Like many other students under pressure to perform, Croner creates routines in order to relieve himself of performance anxiety in the privy.

Simple rituals, students say, is the key to maintaining privacy and cleanliness in the bathroom. The lengths that people will go to maintain these standards, however, range from one extreme to another.

‘It’s an area where inhibitions leave at the door,’ said Rory O’Fee, a senior marketing major. ‘As far as rules go, there’s only one: the middle stall is designated for number one, and the other two are for number two.’

Other students, though, invest much more consideration in their final destination.

‘One of my friends would always go to a different floor whenever he had to do a number two,’ said Lauren Miller, a sophomore retail management major. ‘So when I saw him at the elevator I’d be like, ‘I know what you’re doing.”

Choosing a site for the execution of bathroom deeds, although a physically based process, can also be a psychological struggle.

‘I get paranoid in public restrooms,’ Croner said. ‘Taking a shit is such a mystery of the human psyche. I always have to have my routine on hand.’

In addition to finding less populated bathrooms, another common routine that people use to ease anxiety involves turning on the sink or shower while they are defecating.

‘I knew one girl who always put on the hand dryer when she went to the bathroom so no one would hear her,’ said Cristalyn Vargas, an undecided freshman in the College of Human Services and Health Professions.

For those who find the hand dryer approach ineffective or tedious, simulating fictitious syndromes is another route to privacy.

‘My friend got a doctor’s note for ‘irritable bowel syndrome’ because she felt so uncomfortable using the dorm bathrooms,’ said Krista Oraa, a sophomore communications design major. ‘She gets to live on South Campus now.’

While seemingly extreme, these tactics are not surprising considering the messages students grow up with. Culture encourages people to hide their bathroom activities and associate them with shame, said Bruce Carter, executive director of the department of Child and Family Studies at Syracuse University,

‘We’re told as children that these activities are dirty,’ he said. ‘But parents are trying to convey that fecal matter is dirty, not the act.’

Students often modify their bathroom practices not because of embarrassment, but when there is a lack of communal hygiene. Some bathroom situations demonstrate just how gross other people can be, such as the case of when residents in Shaw Hall last year were known for peeing in the shower, said Kit Rockhill, a sophomore broadcast journalism major.

‘You always knew who it was because you could tell by the towels,’ she said.

‘People are just plain nasty,’ said Cory Friedman, a sophomore information studies and technology major. ‘I feel bad for the cleaning people. I think there’s some unwritten code of anti-hygiene here.’

The combination of careless student health habits and the bathroom’s affinity for microorganisms sometimes encourages students to adapt an unhealthy fear of germs.

‘Some girl was literally a germaphobic (person),’ said Katie Hollenbeck, a junior graphics major. ‘She would wash her hands for 30 minutes, and after she came out of the shower, she had to wash her shampoo bottles.’

The majority of female students agree that when it comes to cleanliness and exposing bodily functions, women tend exhibit more discretion.

‘Girls don’t poop – ever,’ said Angela Maglione, a freshman speech communications and rhetorical studies major. ‘And then there’s boys, who say, ‘I’m about to take a massive shit right now.”

Guys don’t care about how they look in the bathroom, said Robert Boothby, an undecided freshman in The College of Arts and Sciences.

‘We just want to get in and get out while doing the least amount of work,’ Boothby said.

The reason for this contrast in bathroom bragging is due to the fact that boys at a young age are expected to get dirtier and more physical than girls, Carter said. But there are always exceptions to the standard gender stereotypes.

‘Guys can be very sensitive about body functions when trying to impress other people,’ Carter said. ‘It’s not that they can’t be sensitive, it’s just that they usually aren’t.’

With time, however, many students seem to refine their bathroom routine, or simply swallow their pride.

‘I think when I was a freshman I was more shy about it,’ Hollenback said. ‘But now I’m just like, ‘When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go.”

Published on October 6, 2004 at 12:00 pm