Plastic bags filled with urine’ plague dorm at preppy California college

[Guest UnabashedUser]

‘Plastic bags filled with urine’ plague dorm at preppy California college

Jennifer Kabbany - Fix Editor October 30, 2018

 

An elite private college in Southern California is facing a unique health and hygiene problem — “plastic bags filled with urine” are being thrown away in hallway dorm trashcans.

What’s more, “some students had even urinated into bins located within the residence hall, rather than bothering to use the lavatory facilities,” reports the Claremont Independent.

The problem is centered at Walker Hall at Pomona College, a private institution nestled near the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, that costs $70,000 a year in tuition and fees to attend.

An email was recently sent to residents living in the co-ed Walker dorm. They were informed “this behavior is unacceptable, and must stop.”

The email was sent by Pomona’s Residence Life Coordinator, Andrew Castro, who added the building attendants “have been taking extra precautions and steps in order to deal with these incidents. Additionally, the smells start to permeate the general hallway.”

An email sent Monday afternoon to a Pomona College official by The College Fix asking why this might be occurring, how many bags of urine have been found, whether one or more students might be responsible, and what might be the punishment, was not immediately responded to.

Walker Hall is described as hosting 112 residents consisting of seniors, juniors and sophomores.

Pomona College junior and co-editor-in-chief of the Independent, William Gu, told The College Fix that the peers he’s talked to about the problem have expressed “disgust that something like that would happen.”

The whole situation is troubling, he said.

“It seems like it takes more work to urinate in a bag, tie it up, and then throw it in a cash can in the hall compared to just using the restroom like a normal human being,” Gu told The Fix. “… I think it happens on college campuses too often—and is a reflection of decreasing standards of decency today—than something that is one-off.”

[Alfresco 11,633]

Possibly the toilets are down the hall and they don't have sinks in their rooms, so they pee in bags in the night rather than venturing off down the corridor.  Particularly likely if they sleep in the nude as they wouldn't want to have to get dressed to walk down the hall and obviously wouldn't want to go out naked.

Of course it is less clear why, in that situation, they wouldn't just pee in some kind of solid container/bottle and then empty it in the morning.

Personally at my university we had sinks in the room so even though the toilets were down the corridor, people (male and female) used the sinks at night (and sometimes in the day as well).

[Guest UnabashedUser]

Yep that's what I did also. Sometimes a snapple or OJ bottle under the bed.

[greedyneedygirl 4,156]

This sounds familiar! When I went to University for the first time, I did something similar. Our first Halls of Residence was appalling and I shared a room with someone called Phoebe. The communal loos was situated in a long corridor, and if you had been out all night, and drinking, you invariably woke with the a full bladder, and stonking hangover, so what better way to relieve the pressure than to use either a plastic bag or a drinks bottle, (the latter being more difficult, given the narrow top!). We even hung our bums out of the window, (from the second floor) and urinated on the grass below. Luckily, I was only in the Halls for my first year, and for the remainder of my degree had nice appointed houses. I think student accommodation has developed and evolved these days, I know that many of the International Students at Worcester Uni, here in the UK, enjoy 'en-suite' accommodation! Lucky them!

[gldenwetgoose 21,495]

We have an agricultural college very close to us here. It teaches all manner of courses, some involving animals and livestock, others around farming and land management as well as more general college courses. A lot of the courses are vocational - meaning they attract students from all backgrounds who are more suited to a vocational qualification than a pure academic route. The college has a fair proportion of residential students and from a few friends on the staff I know it wasn't at all uncommon for students to lose their retaining deposit payments due to damage to their rooms.

It wasn't at all uncommon to have sinks broken off walls and also the rooms had polystyrene suspended ceiling tiles. It was quite common for goods to be stored up their including bottles of pee quite often.