With the occurrence of recent distasteful incidents on campus, it has come to my attention that many Americans have not been properly potty-trained.

Growing up, I was not allowed to utter swear words in my mother’s presence. She would tell me to go to the toilet, say what I needed to say, and flush. This was usually enough to keep me quiet, but there were occasions during which I would sit, red-faced and angry, screaming obscenities on the bathroom floor. I had an audience—shampoo, towels, Rubber Ducky—and a space in which to express my fleeting grievances. Even in my most capricious states, I felt better after being offensive in a setting that offended no one.

I have found many toilets in Europe to serve the same function. In the French public school I attended, the doors of the loos were plastered with racial slurs, derogatory comments, crude remarks, and sexual innuendo. Highway stops and McDonald’s lavatories fared no better. Let’s not even start on the W.C. in the park—even if I did repeat what was scrawled on those walls, it would not see the light of day in print. And that is precisely why those statements remain in the toilets: They belong there, and nowhere else. I’m sure the majority of bathroom-scrawlers don’t feel the need to further voice their unfriendly opinions. The graffiti is seldom aimed at one person or group—there are usually as many different insults as there are germs in the stall—and I doubt any of them were made in earnest. It’s also not particularly shocking; we all know that some rather dreadful thoughts go through many peoples’ minds, often with no consequence. Sometimes, people need to just let it all out. And what better place to do so than a place that’s full of crap to begin with?

Americans are much too concerned with the cleanliness of their toilets—or should I say, “restrooms.” There is a pervasive culture of sterility in this country, an obsession with cleanliness and hygiene—antibacterials alone are a $16 billion a year industry. Simone de Beauvoir and Freud agree that this preoccupation makes people frigid and obsessive, and Julie Delpy’s latest film 2 Days in Paris is a perfect example of how clean-freak tendencies become a running source of mockery abroad. There’s even medical proof that over-sterilization paradoxically leads to health problems. Allergies and asthma, for example, develop in the immune systems of people unaccustomed to allergens (some of which can be eradicated with Clorox et. al.), and an overuse of antibiotics leads to drug resistance. Literally and metaphorically, people need some dirt in their lives; without it, the tiniest germ can provoke an epidemic.

America’s “mania for asepsis” and obsession with political correctness is completely understandable. Toilet-surveillance is the logical next step after federal wire-tapping and Google ads. Larry Craig learned the hard way, but his plight is symbolic of our total lack of privacy, and it made us all conscious that what is private is public. There’s no telling who is watching us, and this is an enormous problem: privacy is necessary, and when we don’t get it, we act out. In America—and specifically on campus—you can’t walk into a toilet, talk trash (which you may or may not even mean), and walk out purged of your unseemly impulses. But I think that providing people with an anonymous forum to be obscene and get their frustrations out of their systems—a metaphorical toilet wall—might be the best way to curb outbursts like the ones we have been faced with in recent weeks.

When Marcel Duchamp exhibited his urinal as artwork, he may have been asking a question about the role of shit, as well as the meaning of art. Fountain showed the world that to take a toilet out of context in America is to provoke an uproar. Last week, we found the same thing all over Columbia’s campus: some admittedly reprehensible statements taken out of the gutter and into the public domain caused many of us to be very troubled. The fact that this behavior exists is a problem in itself, but I suggest that not making a scene about something that is done in toilets—which are both public and private (as opposed to the door of a faculty member’s office, which is totally public)—may encourage those with negative impulses to take them with them to the john and not let them affect anybody outside the four walls of the bathroom stall. If everyone wrote hate-notes in the toilets, no one would get upset because we’d realize how silly they all are in the first place. Currently, very few people do because of the fuss it causes.

It goes without saying that it isn’t OK to make discriminatory statements, but, unfortunately, they are a reality. Given the situation, we are faced with choosing the lesser evil. We can disinfect our toilets daily and arm ourselves with hand sanitizer, or we can get acquainted with other’s crap to better understand it and eventually realize that one person’s shit smells as bad as anyone else’s.

Atossa Abrahamian is a Columbia College senior majoring in philosophy. The Children of Marx and Coca Cola runs alternate Fridays.
Specopinion@columbia.edu.