Bathroom Bulletin: Beneski Museum of Natural History

Bathroom Bulletin: Beneski Museum of Natural History

As we recently celebrated the official birth of the Ford Student Center (Ford), let’s not forget another building’s monumental milestone this same year — our beloved Beneski Museum of Natural History (Beneski) is officially 20 in 2026! Although it is only a year away from being of age, our college mascot, Bebu, would have been 46 when he died. One could say that this is the perfect place for you to take a mammoth-sized dump (see: Beneski’s collection of fossilized poop)

Located downslope from Fayerweather Hall and the Keefe Campus Center, Beneski is home to the geology department; it also operates as a space for classrooms, labs, offices, and, of course, a museum. Since Ford’s opening, we’ve noticed that overall campus traffic near the Valentine Quad and the northeast side has been greatly reduced. It would have functioned as a nice, within-walking-distance alternative to the horrors of Valentine Dining Hall’s bathrooms, but now, perhaps it’s time to give the bathrooms back to geology majors and visiting families in the museum.

Before we get to our in-depth scholarly analysis, we have to explain our formatting. The one thing that immediately sticks out to us is the consistency: Whichever floor you use, the bathrooms all feel and even look the same. Floors one to three feature both men’s and women’s bathrooms, but they’re so similar we’ve decided to collapse all the floors into one. Our analysis of the men’s bathrooms, for instance, therefore accounts for the men’s bathrooms across all three floors; we’ll note discrepancies when necessary. Don’t worry, we’re still covering the bathroom on the ground floor, too.

It’s worth discussing the layout of floors one to three before we get into the bathrooms themselves. History seems to linger in every corner of the building, even outside the designated museum floor. For floors one to three, walk down the long corridor toward the right until you see a glass display case with meteorites. From there, you can set down your bag in the lounge area before heading to the bathrooms across from the glass displays — how convenient! There are signs that lead you there, so we think the in-building location of the bathrooms isn’t too hard to find.

You will find that even in the bathrooms, a piece of geologic history follows. According to Blair Kamin ’79’s “Amherst College: An Architectural Tour,” the countertops of each floor of the bathrooms are made of different rocks — igneous for the first floor, sedimentary for the second, and metamorphic for both the third and ground floor. 

Women’s

Amenities: 4/5

Each floor has two stalls, one of which is accessible. The first-floor bathroom has a Koala Care changing table, but otherwise, the rest of them all have double sinks, sanitary product dispensers, and most importantly, paper towels! We especially love the countertops with a ginormous mirror, and sinks with good water pressure. 

Cleanliness: 4/5

Besides the occasional roll of toilet paper on the floor, the bathrooms are spotless.

Smell: 3.8/5

May occasionally have a lingering smell, especially for the first-floor bathrooms that are probably most used, but nothing like the permanent rankness in Frost Library’s first-floor bathrooms. 

Traffic: 5/5

Light traffic, if any at all. 

Men’s

Amenities: 4/5

Most of the amenities are the same as the women’s floor. The only difference, of course, are the urinals. Sorry — urinal. Just one. It’s not the end of the world, since according to one statistic the average man spends only 35 seconds at a urinal (at least for the U.K.); 35 seconds should mean nothing, especially for the geology building of all places. They’re thinking in terms of millions of years, man. 

Cleanliness: 4/5

It’s made of rocks, so it rocks (this is the last time we’ll use such a cheap joke, at least for this entry)! The sink and countertop are well-cleaned, as with other parts.

Smell: 3.5/5

Generally acceptable. The higher up you go, the better (or less bad) the smell gets, since the traffic also gets sparse. Fortune favors the gold.

Traffic: 5/5

Beneski is one of those buildings where we often take the good traffic for granite. Sorry. We promise that’s the last one — but go up that staircase! Nobody’s going to bother you.

Gender Neutral: Ground Floor

Amenities: 4/5

Featuring handle-flush toilets, the two gender neutral bathrooms have a mirrored layout of each other. They have a long vertical mirror that goes up to the ceiling, a sink basin with just the right enough depth to prevent splashbacks, a tampon dispenser (only in the right bathroom), and paper towels!

Cleanliness: 4/5

Pretty clean.

Smell: 4/5

Not unpleasant. 

Traffic: 5/5

Virtually none.

The Final Dump

“Flying cars,” they said. We’re not in the world of “Blade Runner” just yet, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t appreciate the technology we have at hand — after all, some of this stuff is millions of years in the making. Look, is it the most cutting-edge stuff we’ve seen? No, not really, not even close.

But there’s something cozy about being surrounded by minerals and bones as you add another piece of would-be coprolite into Beneski’s porcelain thrones — a blast from the past, one might say, as well as from other … places. For a building consisting mostly of dead things on display, there’s quite a bit of life in these bathrooms that takes you out of the ultra-modern, soulless bathrooms on this campus’ recent architectural innovations.

Take this moment to ground yourself in the history of the natural landscape, as you contribute to the mineral makeup of the building. You, who are sitting on the toilet seat, are physically connected to it. From one mammoth to another.

Averaged Ratings:

Floors one to three: 4.163

Gender Neutral (ground floor): 4.25

Building total: 4.21