colette wilkinson 
 

The toilet. The “loo.” The “facility.” A wonderful thing however you may wish to say it.

 

A practical port of convenience, offering blessed relief from that heavy burden you may have carried a little too long for comfort. A quiet chance to catch up on some light reading. A sanctuary in which to escape a raucous office, or “hug the porcelain” the morning after the night before, which happened to involve a quick glass of wine, followed by five more, followed by flaming sambucas.

 

Hands up those who noticed the common denominator in all accounts of our esteemed “privies.” Unless I’m mistaken, all of the above require, at least in part, an element of privacy. Yes, Harvard University, I’m talking to you.

 

Don’t misunderstand me. So far, my time here has been delightful. I’ve met and mingled with individuals from all over the world. Classes are challenging, inspiring, entertaining. There is, however, one thing I will not miss: uncomfortably wide toilet cubicle door hinges.  In other words, having to pee with an audience.   

Not long after arriving at the university, I was working late in the Science Center on campus. It was almost 9.30 p.m. and the area was fairly quiet with only a few people milling around. I paid a quick visit to the ladies’ room and upon exiting the cubicle and heading towards the sinks, a tall girl in a bright red top breezed into one of the cubicles behind me. After washing my hands, I stood for a few more moments in front of the mirror, straightening an irksome section of hair.

 

Movement. My eye darted to the right as I caught the mirrored image of something through a door hinge. Thigh. Upper thigh. Christ! Why am I looking?  I forced my eyes back to my face.

 

More movement and the sounds of toilet roll tearing. My eye darted back to the stall in the mirrored background.  Toilet roll is in hand, and makes contact with skin. No, wait.

 

WHY AM I LOOKING?

 

Finding somewhere, anywhere else to look, a sinking feeling enveloped me as once again I faced my own reflection.

 

I didn’t mean to look. Perhaps it was her bright red top that caught my eye, or maybe the combination of her long legs and the relatively short toilet meant her legs were more in view through the door hinge. Regardless, why was I able to see? And just how wide are these gaps anyway?

 

1.3 cm as it happens, which is just over half an inch. Surprisingly narrow given all I could see.

 

It wasn’t just the girl in the red top. I’ve often felt more than a little awkward when doing my business, as I try to shield myself from view—particularly in Harvard’s Sever Hall.

 

In Sever Hall, there are only three toilet cubicles in the female facilities, which service the entire building, so the possibility of being examined through the gaps in the door hinge is worsened by the expectant queue that invariably forms during halfway breaks in a three-hour class period. Four, five, sometimes six people, earnestly watching and waiting for their opportunity to go.

 

To add insult to humiliation, the gap between the side and front walls of a stall in Sever Hall measures a whopping 1.7 cm, which is creeping closer to a full inch. 

 

I’m sure nobody’s looking, but somehow I find this irrelevant. Frankly, if I can be seated on the toilet and start thinking to myself how nice that girl’s earring is, with its deep blue stone and Ottoman-style dangly bit, I’m seeing too much. The gap may as well be a foot wide for the extent to which one feels appallingly exposed.

 

Is it the curse of being terribly British? Have I grown up too sheltered?  Worse, am I a prude?

 

“No, it’s so strange” Noor Dhillon tells me. Dhillon is a student of Medical Sciences and Biostatistics from Seattle, Wash. 

 

“You’re sitting doing your personal business and you can watch people roaming around,” she continued. “I mean, we shut the doors for a reason.”

 

Bravo.

 

But are we outnumbered as females? Possibly. Curious about my rant, a course friend from Connecticut, Yahya Chaudhry, assures me it’s “not a big deal.”

 

“Guys don't care. We use urinals without stalls all the time.”

 

Fine. Men have peed in public for centuries. But a sit-down visit may raise different concerns.

 

A student of Ecological Management, originally from Texas, who would rather remain nameless given the obscene nature of this article, described an uncomfortable incident while texting a friend seated on a toilet in Annenberg Hall. Looking up, he met the eye of another gentleman, reportedly less than a foot away, looking directly at him through a door hinge.  

 

“Unnerved,” he said when asked to describe how he felt. “Unfinished.”

 

I can appreciate there is practicality involved here. The stalls are temporary structures, which will require dismantling at some point meaning these gaps are inevitable. But, Harvard, I must ask, must they be so very generous?

 

During my time here in the States, I have actually started substituting my native term “loo” for “restroom”, a pleasant euphemism though an odd one, as it’s the last place I would want to have a rest.

 

But it leads to me to a final desperate plea. How could I possibly rest knowing that numerous sets of eyes could be on me at any time, focusing directly on my engaging in a particular activity that I, and apparently many people worldwide, have always deemed private?

 

Please reconsider.