Forget Egypt. Forget the Tea Party. You want to bring up a hot button issue in the hard lounge? Let’s talk about the bathrooms. And that conversation will turn ugly really, really fast. Not just because you find out way more about your friends or significant others than you necessarily wanted to (see next page), but also because nobody has particularly good things to say. It tends to be a parade of horribles, and everyone has a story. Or two. Or ten.

Since the male perspective will be covered, we thought it would be important for some equally in-depth coverage of the girls’ bathrooms here at the law school. Now for some reason, people are more uncomfortable with the idea of an article about little girls’ rooms than they are about little boys’ rooms. That might be because it’s about to Get Real up in this piece. We warned you. If cursory use of the word “tampon” is going to upset you, gross you out, or throw you into a patriarchal rage, stop reading here. Pads and ‘pons are part and parcel (see what we did there?) of the lady-bathroom experience. Love, Jillian and Hannah.

Issue #1: Supplies

It stands to reason that roughly 750 women use a lot of toilet paper, paper towels, and those weird tissue paper seat cover things (maybe that’s why whenever one of your writers goes into the bathroom, she discovers semi-wet ones stuck to the toilet seats). That’s a lot of people, specifically concentrated in the high traffic areas of the two bathrooms on either side of the hard lounge, and the second floor library bathroom. That’s a lot of paper products and trees that have sacrificed themselves for your bathroom comfort.

Here’s what we don’t understand, though. How is it that we are always out of toilet paper by the end of the week? Do we ration toilet paper? “Oops, too many people tinkled on Thursday. Sorry ladies, we’ve gotta clamp down on TP distribution.” Is it just that the women of George Washington Law go out and TP the White House on Thursday night after Bar Review? All we know is that if you come in on Friday and have to use the facilities, you could end up with a problem. Maybe personal finance is not the only place that a budget would be appropriate. Maybe we need to acknowledge that people pee on Sundays too.

Also, can we get an “Amen” to the fact that this is the twenty-first century, and ridiculously bulky cardboard tampon applicators no longer cut it? Tampon technology has evolved since the late 1980s. Just looking at one of those ginormous things makes us uncomfortable. We do not want to pay for anything that looks like it belongs in a hamster cage. That is, of course, when the dispensers are stocked. It seems that along with the failure to acknowledge that girls pee on weekends, the school has also failed to acknowledge that girls have happy moon cycle times and are sometimes caught without the appropriate ladyproducts.

Issue #2: Trash disposal

1Ls, this was never a problem last year. And we don’t really understand why it’s a problem now. But unless we get some eyewitness accounts of what’s going on, we’re blaming it on you.

Probably the most disturbing aspect of this issue is that the little in-stall sanitary-product trash cans get moved around. Sometimes they’ve been moved behind the toilet. Sometimes they’re under the divider, which means that you and your next-door neighbor might reach down at the same time. This is gross, especially if your hands touch. The trash cans do occasionally end up in the right place, but most often there is just a gaping hole between stalls. So, please, double check. Just because the door to the trash can is there doesn’t mean that there’s a receptacle behind that door waiting for you to dispose of your ladyproducts. So what happens when you throw your, um, “supplies” there? It just flies at the unsuspecting person next to you. One of your writers is still recovering from such an episode.

Issue #3: Water, water, everywhere.

Subissue A: The Sinks

Water comes from the faucet, and should flow directly into the sink, making only one other stop: your hands. How does it get all on the counter top? Are we taking a break from studying by pretending we’re eight years old and it’s summer? Are we washing our hair?

Subissue B: The Floors

See above. What goes on in these bathrooms? We’ve never seen anything but traditional bathroom behavior in most of these facilities… so what’s going on unseen? If someone is creating impromptu slip-and-slides, we’re mad we haven’t been invited.

Subissue C: The Scary Autoflushing Toilet

Seriously. The motion detectors have trigger fingers like Dirty Harry after too many espressos. The Stockton third floor bathroom’s handicapped stall is probably the worst. Not only are we concerned about the effects of whatever’s in the toilet being repeatedly splashed up at us while we’re still sitting there, we’re concerned about just how much water we’re wasting. Mother Earth is mad, ladies. She’s super mad, and will probably take it out on that bathroom first.

Issue #4: Sanitation, people

We’re not sure why it’s hard to throw paper towels in the trash. We’re also not sure why sometimes there’s wet toilet paper on the floor of the stalls. One of your writers is definitely not sure how… um… waste got on the wall of a third-floor bathroom, but she is sure she audibly dry heaved when she saw it.

The conclusion is simple, ladies (and concerned gentlemen who have made it this far). We are not sure if it is a failure of maintenance, supply, or just common decency and basic personal hygiene on behalf of those utilizing the GW ladies facilities, but it’s definitely a failure we’re dealing with. And like all good Americans, the two of us know that the appropriate people to turn to are our elected representatives. SBA, we need toilet paper on Sundays. And some counseling for Hannah after the flying tampon incident.