Imagine a world where there is always toilet paper in the bathroom stall. A world where there are no lines and where there’s no need to worry about touching that gross spot on the toilet and where, most importantly, the air smells more like daisies than defecation.

That fantasy is not as far away as you might think — your dream bathroom could be in the next building on campus.

For ISU students, faculty or staff members, using one of the university’s 157 bathrooms is nearly inevitable. The question, then, is which should you use?

Students had differing opinions on which campus bathrooms are the cleanest, most sanitary and best-looking, but most named the very “presidential” bathrooms on the lower floor of Beardshear Hall among their favorite facilities.

“I didn’t know there were bathrooms like this on campus,” said Ellyn Moore, senior in English education.

With a clean appearance, color coordination and the preservation of their more historic aspects, Beardshear bathrooms seem to have drawn quite a fan base. But so, too, have bathrooms on the main floor of the Memorial Union.

“I love the parlor in the women’s restroom,” said Christa Miller, senior in Spanish. “It’s so fancy.”

Also, the men’s room on the main floor of the Memorial Union features urinals from the early 1900s. The antique qualities of Beardshear and the Memorial Union bathrooms have been preserved, along with other historic aspects, during renovations to keep the buildings’ heritage intact, said Dean Morton, university architect.

More modern-looking bathrooms, like those on the lower level of Howe Hall, have also captured students’ interest. The combination of stainless steel stall dividers, shiny purple-, green- and white-tiled walls and monochrome tiled floors lend a futuristic — and super-clean — aura to the women’s room.

Brandy Rowe, junior in communication studies, said she prefers to use facilities like those on the first floor of the Gerdin Business Building because they are bigger and newer than others in surrounding buildings.

“I don’t think there are any that are really terrible — the newer ones are just better,” Rowe said.

Many students disagreed, noting several truly terrible bathrooms on campus. Among those to avoid are bathrooms located on the first floor of Coover Hall because they “are just awful,” said Nick Loehlein, senior in electrical engineering.

“Every time I go in there, I feel like I’m peeing in an alley,” Loehlein said in reference to the men’s restroom in Coover’s first-floor lobby. “But at least they always have soap.”

Another building notorious for its subpar bathrooms is Snedecor Hall. Tanzy Love, graduate student in statistics, said Snedecor’s toilets are always flooding or backing up.

“Last year, the second-floor bathrooms, I think, flooded the main office with sewage,” Love said.

Snedecor Hall is also home to one of Iowa State’s most unique bathrooms. The second-floor women’s facilities has a rear room containing a dust-coated bed covered with a faded red blanket. At its foot sits a battered wooden filing cabinet filled with magazines.

“There’s a lot of debate within the department about who uses that bed,” Love said. “We just don’t know.”

Regardless of a bathroom’s favored or unfavored status, they are all cleaned once a day, said Paul Haggard, manager of facilities maintenance. Haggard said his staff of 125 tries to tidy them all up in the middle of the day, but that’s not always feasible.

“We usually target buildings like Design and Gerdin with higher traffic,” he said. “It also depends on the staffing and weather. There are more restrooms than I have workers.”

The size and shape of restrooms in each particular building is left up to the building’s architect, but Haggard said the university design staff under Morton consults his custodial team about which materials and fixtures are best to use in new and remodeled restrooms.

“We’re lucky that we have bathrooms of all ages around here so we can see what holds up the best, what’s hard to clean and easy to clean,” Haggard said.

Differences between men’s and women’s facilities are also obvious. The university is required to follow state building codes and Board of Regents policies for the number of toilets and urinals that need to be installed in men’s and women’s facilities, Morton said.

“The Board of Regents, in their infinite wisdom, has decided women need two-and-a-half times the amount of facilities as men,” he said. “We don’t argue with that.”

Morton said this new requirement came about after most of the new buildings on campus, such as Gerdin, were planned, so the university didn’t have to follow it. However, he said, restrooms at both Hilton Coliseum and Jack Trice Stadium followed this rule before the requirement because they have very large capacities.

“During remodeling at the stadium, we had to reduce men’s and increase women’s facilities,” Morton said. “You only have so much space to work with.”

Many women’s restrooms on campus also have couches and other comfortable sitting areas, whereas men’s have none.

“When I started in the architecture business 30 years ago, that’s just something you did, an unspoken rule,” Morton said. “But we’ve stopped putting couches in women’s restrooms … we have to be as efficient as we can, and we don’t like to spend space for functions that really have no purpose.”

But even though all restrooms on campus may not be created equal, there is one factor they still have in common — Haggard said every one of them uses the same kind of toilet paper.

Best bathrooms on campus:

• Beardshear Hall lower level — Old meets new in the renovation of these ultra-clean facilities.
• Howe Hall lower level — Wins the award for the coolest color scheme, plus feels brand-new.
• Memorial Union first floor — The parlor’s decor makes inhabitants feel like movie stars.
• Gerdin Business Building first floor — Hardly a spot spoils the pristine surfaces of one of campus’ newest bathrooms.

Most unique bathroom:

• Snedecor Hall second floor women’s — The rickety bed and old filing cabinet give this bathroom an oddly homey feel.

Worst bathrooms on campus:

• Snedecor Hall — These restrooms have a tendency to spew sewage.
• Coover Hall first floor — Comparable to restrooms in a New York City subway station.
• Gilman Hall — Not only old, but also virtually non-existent: It took more than five minutes to find a women’s bathroom.

Have a complaint about a bathroom?

Visit

www.fpm.iastate.edu/custodial and send feedback to the custodial supervisory staff about what you’d like to see fixed.