Ryerson University’s student paper broke what is likely the most important story of the year at the Canadian school.
And it took a threatened open-records request to reveal the truth.
The only restrooms on campus that get two-ply toilet paper are on floors that include “offices of the president, provost, vice-president administration finance, vice-president research and innovation and vice-president university advancement,” The Eyeopener reports.
Students have been stuck with “translucent, gotta-fold-it-thirteen-times one-ply” since time immemorial, yet every senior official at Ryerson is trying to pass the buck for why they get special treatment:
“When I found out about this on day one, I said this is shocking, embarrassing, make sure this doesn’t happen,” [President Sheldon] Levy said.
But this “has been the allocation pattern for the past 10 plus years,” said Ryerson spokesperson Michael Forbes. There is no conclusive reason for the toilet paper distribution.
The school claims it might cost $80,000 more a year to stock two-ply in every restroom, and some “older pipes” might not be able to handle two-ply, but it’s looking into making two-ply standard across campus.
The scoop created a frenzy in Canada’s professional media outlets, prompting the Ryerson spokesman to provide the Toronto Star with “a list of a dozen other departments on campus that he said are stocked with the premium tissue.”
The TP travesty was unearthed by a nearly two-year investigation. Bravo to the Eyeopener!
In an interview with the Star, the 20-year-old [journalism student Laura Woodward] said she started looking into the school’s toilet paper practices in February 2014, when she spotted a package of coveted two-ply rolls among janitorial supplies at the Student Campus Centre. …
To find out, she called every toilet paper distributor in Toronto and discovered one of them did indeed supply Ryerson with two-ply paper. Woodward then approached the school’s facilities department. When she told them she would file an access-to-information request, she says a university spokesperson contacted her and revealed the toilet paper truth: some people get two-ply; most scrape by with the thinner stuff.
(Thanks to George Washington University Law Prof. John Banzhaf, the self-proclaimed “Father of Potty Parity,” for spotting this.)
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