'Tragedy of the Commons' — in the Princeton bathroom

Columnists for this paper like to write somber, reflective pieces about how we lack awareness of the world beyond the Princeton "bubble." They tell us we should care more about the environment, the war in Iraq, the delicacies of race relations, or some other weighty issue. The basic theme is always that we are too comfortable at Princeton, and we risk losing touch with the squalid realities of the world "beyond the gates." There is some truth to this. But life at Princeton is quite squalid in itself. We face a number of immense social problems. One of them is that no one flushes the toilet.

Floaters have become something of a pandemic in the bathrooms and restrooms of Old Nassau. The inspiration for this column came to me one night last week when I had to walk from my own Hamilton Hall, to Rocky Commons and thence to the basement of Joline Hall, all in search of a clean toilet. It was not the first time. I abandoned my column on "BodyHype and the Decline of the West." It so seemed trivial. Slowly I realized that I was sitting on a real social crisis.

Nonsense, you say. This guy's just crabby about a messy bathroom. Yes, I am. I won't hold it in. But there's more at stake in the failure of so many Princetonians to show concern for one another in matters of hygiene. When toilets are regularly left unflushed — worse, when in the wee hours of a Friday morning one can wander downstairs (in slippers of course) to find all three stalls filled with vomit — it means that in a small but real way decency and civilization are under attack.

How do we explain this scatological slovenliness? Drunks? Absentminded scientists? Anthropology majors gone native? No doubt the disciples of Bacchus are partly to blame, as may be others feeling a kind of Freudian pride in their accomplishments. But the filth is too widespread for these sorts of answers. We must find a wider, structural cause. Fortunately, a simple economic model provides a potential explanation.

Nineteenth-century Oxford economist William Forster Lloyd studied the phenomenon now relished by economics majors as "The Tragedy of the Commons." Lloyd asked why common grazing lands, acreage open to everyone's sheep or cattle, had sparser vegetation than private ones. He concluded that common property creates bad incentives. Each farmer gained directly from adding his livestock to the pasture, while sharing the costs of overgrazing with the entire community. In simple terms, people feel they can be selfish with property that lacks a definite owner. They are far more careful with their own. The commons was depleted because similar incentives faced all farmers.

In a closer analog to bathrooms, this idea also helps explain environmental pollution. The plutocratic chief of a pharmaceutical corporation blissfully dumps toxic byproducts at sea. This is only rational. He does not "own" the ocean, but he does own the profits from producing hemorrhoid cream. The costs are inflicted upon all the other users of the ocean. All economic actors face similar incentives and the sea is polluted.

On a smaller scale, this logic applies to bathrooms as well. A messy student benefits from seconds of saved effort (i.e., laziness) and from the secret, transgressive joy acquired from not bothering to flush or wash his hands. The harms are spread out across all the other users of the bathroom; someone else — either a student or a member of the cleaning staff — can always do the flushing. Someone else can catch a stomach virus off the doorknob. The problem is nothing so simple as a lack of bathroom etiquette. Those who do not flush on campus no doubt flush back home. Common lands, common oceans and common toilets: The logic is the same.

Significantly, bathrooms that are most "common" are dirtiest. Hamilton Hall, with only one men's room for the entire building is a good example. Bathrooms that are less common, as in Blair Hall are cleaner. With fewer users there is a greater sense of ownership and more accountability to the "community." I have confirmed these facts through extensive — though often hurried — research.

Frustrated with the filth, those of us who miss the clean scented bathrooms of home look desperately for solutions. Mounting a twenty-four hour guard is not feasible. Angry letters to building services do nothing to confront the skulking, shadowy and smelly perpetrators. How do we confront this inexorable, intolerable, malignant economic calculus?

We need to create a culture of shame.

Return to the pollution example. Environmental regulations are not enough to deter abusers. Advocacy groups like Greenpeace focus public attention on abusers who would otherwise go unnoticed. The plutocrat will happily pollute until a horde of tofu-guzzling tree-huggers chain themselves to his dumping barge, shaming him in a sympathetic press. Social scientists have observed that in societies where property is owned by all — think of obscure religious sects, Fourier farms or early Christian communities — shame is used to ensure the proper use and upkeep of communal goods.

Our course should be clear. The only answer is to turn our restrooms into places of quivering, crushing, shameful accountability. Next time you are sitting quietly on the toilet and the person in the stall next to you stands up, listen carefully.

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Rustling paper? Good. What? No flush? Raise your voice and with a tone that bespeaks the wrath of the Almighty call out: "Hey You! Flush the @#$*%& toilet!"

Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky is a Wilson School major from New York, N.Y.