A graffiti-marred mirror found in the third-floor women’s bathroom in Kerr Hall South.

Nicole Witkowski

Toilet paper strewn all over the floor, clogged sinks and lip balm drawings across the mirrors – these scenes are all too familiar for Ryerson students and staff. 

“One out of every five urinals I see (isn’t) flushed,” said Alex Tramov, a fourth-year Ryerson history student. “And as for actual toilets, it’s very much like playing a lottery game in whether or not someone has left them disgusting: either stained with urine or other stuff, or filled to the brim with toilet paper.”

Although Ryerson’s website notes that washrooms are cleaned nightly, students still seem to find cracks in the university’s current maintenance system. 

Czarah Galivo, a third-year nursing student, said she’s seen “number two in the washroom not flushed or sometimes on the floor.”

Unlike restaurants and areas in close vicinity to food preparations, there are no city bylaws that require inspections of the cleanliness of private washrooms, according to a Toronto Public Health spokesperson. The only time Toronto Public Health would step in is if there is a risk of infection, in which case a complaint would have to be logged and infections control would take over. 

“Just from sitting on a toilet seat, you can catch lots of different rashes,” said third-year nursing student, Marie Eusebio, who agrees that students should be responsible when using the facilities. “Everyone’s walking around like that without basic washroom manners. It’s just unhygienic.”

Tramov says he occasionally slips into a staff washroom if he catches his mother while she’s working in her Ryerson office. But if he’s not so lucky, he has had to narrow down his bathroom choices to one semi-secret location on the second floor of the POD.

In a written statement to The Ryersonian, Adrian Williams, the acting manager of Ryerson’s Maintenance and Operations, said the staff try to keep the several hundred washrooms across approximately 39 buildings well maintained.

“Our washrooms are fully cleaned every night, so that at the start of the day they are clean and tidy,” said Williams, who notes that there have been no cases of infections spread due to bacteria left behind in the washroom. “As the day progresses they do become more untidy, even though we clean them regularly during the day as well.”Williams says that washroom cleanliness should also be a responsibility for those that use them, and not just the maintenance staff. 

“The conditions in the washrooms are caused by the people that use the washrooms,” said Williams.

And Galivo agrees. 

“The people using the washrooms … I don’t understand how they don’t just flush it.” 

This story was first published in The Ryersonian, a weekly newspaper produced by the Ryerson School of Journalism, on March 20, 2013.