Today I honor the best-in-class Princeton bathrooms. On a date to be announced, statuettes will be presented at a formal award ceremony in Brown Hall. Though the official title of the award is the Princeton University Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellent Toiletry, I suspect that they will quickly become known as "The Johnnies." Without further ado, here are the winners for 2006:
Best Overall: Third Floor Frist, Men's Bathroom. This one is the stuff of legends. Like all Frist facilities, it is cleaned every morning, has bright, reliable lighting and an abundant supply of paper towels. But the real glory here is the third stall, ostensibly for handicapped patrons, but available to any lucky soul who happens to find it empty. According to legend, Bill Frist himself performed an emergency caesarean section in this spacious stall, helping to birth Choi Hong-Man, the man who would grow up to become mixed martial arts champion of South Korea.
Best Mess: Rewarded retroactively to Forbes 206 and Forbes 271. From 2004-2006, Brett Barrie and I pushed our Forbes bathrooms to the limit. A friend of Brett's once visited late in the year. He had just returned from a weeklong army trek in the mountains, where he had used outdoor latrines without a problem. He took one look at our bathroom and this is what he said: "I am not going in there."
Highest Proportion of Urinals to Stalls: Forbes Basement, Male Bathroom. I know little of bathroom engineering, but I would imagine that the 5:1 urinals to stalls ratio found in the Forbes basement is something of an anomaly in the bathroom design world.
Lowest Proportion of Urinals to Stalls: Mathey College, Male Bathrooms. Bill Foran of Mathey College recently told me that "There is not a single urinal in all of Mathey. For a once all-male school, where have all the urinals gone?" I would direct Bill's attention to the previous award.
Best Signs on the Wall: Career Services Office, First Floor. The signage in the career office bathroom leads me to believe a tragedy happened there. "Remember this is a public restroom," says one. "Please: Do not leave a mess," reads another.
Most Luxurious: Prospect House, First Floor. I've never actually seen the Prospect facilities; you need to earn at least one Nobel Prize or one million dollars just to enter. Rumor has it, though, that there is no toilet at all. Instead, two strong men hold you over a hole above some poor people. There have also been whispers in the past of two-ply toilet paper, though this seems unlikely.
Most Elite Clientele: Ivy Club, Second Floor. This bathroom has seen some of the most important people in America, without any of the riffraff who get into the ground floor bathroom on nonmembers nights. Because Ivy has been in the same building for 100 years, we can assume that both Woodrow Wilson and Michael Lewis have done their business here. Maybe even Michael Jordan, though I can't see why that would be the case.
Most Technologically Impressive: Dillon Gym, Basement. John Fleming has written previously of the urinals in Dillon Gym, which notably do not flush. An achievement like that shatters my previously held assumption that toilets must flush and calls into question that which I once took for granted. If toilets needn't flush, must I wash my hands? Or even shower? Empirical evidence has shown that the answer remains yes.
So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen: the first annual Jonnies. I hope that everyone enjoyed themselves, and my most sincere congratulations to all of the winners. To those restrooms looking to make the list next time, I offer the following hint: Attendants would provide a welcome twist to the traditional Princeton formula. Also, two-ply means an instant spot in the hall of fame. Tom Knight is an economics major from San Juan Capistrano, Calif. He can be reached at ttknight@princeton.edu.
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