Bathroom Bulletin: Betty’s Bathrooms

Now is the winter of our discontent. 

Okay, it’s not winter yet, but there’s a lot of discontent, and we don’t mean just our bowel movements. We speak for everyone when we say that settling into Amherst College’s new campus last week was strange. If we had to guess why, it’s most likely because of Amherst’s very own Sagrada Familia: the Ford Student Center (Ford). 

Standing on the grave of Merrill Science Center, Ford (the student center, not the man) faces a lot of pressure to perform well. Unfortunately, it hasn’t hit all the right places. For instance, it centralizes student life near the Greenways, which we don’t mind for the pretty view but also leaves the rest of campus begging for foot traffic. How does this impact the bathroom economy? We think that the Greenways already represent a high-density area of advanced bathroom technology, and Ford only adds to that concentration — where’s the love for our Marsh House residents? In essence, this campus might be due for some toilet technology wealth distribution, maybe somewhere closer to where Valentine Dining Hall (Val) sits. 

It’s also confusing to have two buildings that share the same surname. But do not fret: Within Ford (the student center, not the dormitory) we have Betty’s Kitchen, which is not only Val’s official successor but also occupies most of the second floor. As the title of this entry suggests, we Bathroom Bulletin editors have decided to use our best judgment and have split our review of Ford’s bathrooms into multiple articles: For this week, you get Betty’s bathrooms. Why? We’d like to say it’s because we want to give each individual bathroom the personal, liberal arts-style attention it deserves as per Amherst’s 7:1 student-to-faculty ratio, but it’s really because the other floors are still under construction until Sept. 18. We know. We’re just as sad as you are. 

Thankfully, there’s a lot to say about Betty’s Kitchen and her bathrooms, other than the fact that saying you’re “Bettysitting” instead of “Valsitting” doesn’t feel quite right. Perhaps the real reason why the campus feels so strange, especially as we tap our IDs against those soulless metal bollards guarding Betty’s, is that the name suggests something homely, something “just like what grandma used to make,” despite the fact that the “heart” of our community’s future is anything but that. The words we’d use to describe a facility of this scale with its Stanley Kubrick-style interior are “VERY BIG & BOLD,” not necessarily “the warmth and familiarity that tells us we’re home.” Sorry, anonymous grandchild of Betty. 

We’d hoped that Betty’s bathrooms might have a different atmosphere, but they’re perhaps the strangest parts of this building. From the bathrooms being clustered toward the exit to the automatic soap dispensers that don’t quite know when to stop drooling white fluid, there are a lot of design choices we don’t understand. Given the avant-garde layout of the bathrooms, we’ve categorized them as inside (right before you exit) and outside (right after you exit).

Inside Bathroom — Common Area

Amenities: 3/5

Remember to push the front door (and yes, that means ignoring the pull handle). As you enter, you step into some quasi-clinic, clean and quiet to a tee, painted from top to bottom with that strange shade of baby blue. But what’s that sound? It’s your heart beating — maybe it’s a tad too quiet. We’ve heard several different names when people try to describe this bathroom: David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, and Andrei Tarkovsky, just to name a few. There’s more: Now you need to pick between the two gender-inclusive single bathrooms, the women’s bathrooms, and the men’s bathrooms, which all occupy different spaces in the common area.

We know that’s already a lot. One might as well call it the Ford Bathroom Center. We’re okay with the formal experimentation, like the soap dispenser hanging low, but what we’re not okay with is the inconsistent door design: The outer doors have pull handles, while the inner doors don’t. Some doors are push doors but have handles on both sides.

Other things: two Dyson hand dryers and one paper towel dispenser (see our review of the Lyceum to understand why we’re anti-dryer). The towels are always too close to the dispensing opening side of the machine, causing you to use the twisty side bar to get more of it, but that defeats the purpose of having no contact with any bathroom surface after washing your hands; it’s also always running out.

Granted, the cool thing about this bathroom is that you’ll be sharing a space with all genders as you finish your business at the island washing station (because you always wash your hands, right?). As we mentioned before, be ready for the soap dispenser: It gets too excited and doesn’t quite know when to finish, so you’ll always watch some white discharge dribble onto the basin. In any case, we think the island was a good idea: Perhaps this is a good way to socially pressure people (not anyone in particular, obviously) into actually washing their hands. 

Cleanliness: 3.5/5

The baby blue color brings out the random water stains and paper bits on the ground that would otherwise be less noticeable.

Smell: 3/5

There’s a slightly weird smell in only the common area. What gives?

Traffic: 4.5/5

Despite being one of two bathrooms currently servicing the entire dining hall, the traffic hasn’t been bad just yet. Compared to Val, which had 10 stalls on the first floor and basement combined, Betty’s bathrooms have almost double the number of stalls. 

Location: 3/5

The outside corridor can get pretty crowded since it’s located right next to the exit and dish return. Theoretically, a bathroom near the exit is pretty useful for people who need to do their business right after a meal, but considering the fact that there’s also a bathroom right outside Betty’s, the placement of these two bathrooms could be better. We’d rather have a bathroom near one of the seating areas instead.

Inside Bathroom — Gender Inclusive

Amenities: 4/5

Two spacious singles. Honestly? Pretty good. We’re always glad to see Koala Care changing tables, even if it’s just one of the stalls. There’s ample toilet paper as well as a wall trash can.

Cleanliness: 4/5

Obviously it’s not spotless, but it’s incredibly clean. As we said for the common area, this might be one of the greatest downsides of the interior’s blue color: It only takes one person’s dirty shoes to ruin the lofty vision our dear architects had.

Smell: 3/5

Nothing terrible, nothing great, nothing to make note of here. 

Traffic: 4/5 

You’d think with these two bathrooms taking up so much of your immediate attention that more people would use them, but so far we’ve found the traffic to be pretty good. 

Inside Bathroom — Men’s

Amenities: 3/5

Pushing open the mysteriously heavy door of the men’s section, you’ll find an assortment of stalls foreign to most other men’s bathrooms, even the famously gender-neutral ones in the Science Center. There are three stalls in this short hallway: two doors hide a toilet, one hides a urinal. Choose wisely. The doors and walls of each stall extend from floor to ceiling, which means you’ll truly feel private. The only downside is that there are no trash cans, but that also appears to be endemic to Betty’s Kitchen. 

Cleanliness: 4/5

Really, how many more times can we complain about the color? It’s clean, so clean that we sometimes wonder if the college scrubbed the humanity out of Betty’s too.

Smell: 4/5

We haven’t had enough data testing to really know how Betty’s men’s bathrooms handle stink bombs, but for now we haven’t run into any issues.

Traffic: 3.5/5

There’s moderate traffic for sure, especially during peak hours. But for some reason it’s never felt as hectic as Val used to. The only downside is that since there are only three men’s stalls, traffic might overflow into the two gender neutral stalls pretty quickly. Also, sometimes you and another person might exit your stalls at the same time, which is pretty awkward.

Inside Bathroom — Women’s

Amenities: 3/5

There are six stalls, one being a semi-accessible stall (the size is pretty narrow, but has support bars), featuring automatic flush toilets with no lid, a trash area, toilet paper dispenser, and a singular hook. The doors go from floor to ceiling, even more private than the Science Center stalls, making it feel like a single bathroom. 

Cleanliness: 4/5

See literally all of our notes on cleanliness.

Smell: 3.75/5

Not bad, nothing noteworthy, but that’s usually a good thing! 

Traffic: 3/5

Good flow of traffic. Having more stalls seems to keep the traffic at bay! 

Outside Bathroom

It’s not every day that we encounter a set of bathrooms so formally innovative that we’re forced to change our ranking format. But here we are. Whereas in prior entries we’ve had a No Bathroom Left Behind policy, we can’t do the same here. Why? All of Betty’s bathrooms are too similar, and it’s better to concisely explain the differences than to do a full description of each one. This means you should assume our criteria (amenities, smell, etc.) for the outside bathrooms are the same as the inside ones unless stated otherwise. Those minor differences do mean that the numbers will shift slightly, which we’ll represent with a single value representing the whole bathroom instead of one per criterion. We’re sorry to let down our biggest fans, but it’s really the college’s fault for not thinking critically enough about The Student’s most popular column.

The common area features an altered layout from the inside bathroom: slightly longer, with double doors that are often propped open or take a long time to close (it may be awkward to make prolonged eye contact with someone leaving Betty’s as you focus on the importance of washing your hands). There are also strange holes on some sections of the walls. The location here is slightly worse than the inside bathroom — if you’re exiting Betty’s, you get a choice of which bathroom twin to select, twin. But if you’re not scanned in the dining hall and you want to use this bathroom, you’ll run head-on into exiting traffic, especially during peak meal times: 3.5.

The gender inclusive bathroom is an upgrade from the inside bathrooms. Take what we said about the inside bathroom and make it better by having beautifully lit mirrors and sleek flat basin sinks with automatic water and soap dispensers. The bathroom closest to the end also features a Koala Care changing table: 4.5.

For the women’s bathroom, everything is pretty much the same except for an additional stall, plus two of them are wheelchair accessible. We do want to note the frustrating push/pull dilemma that carries over from the inside bathroom, though: 3.8.

We swear we’re not men’s rights activists, but it seems like Betty’s legacy didn’t leave much for her male heir(s) — two bathroom stalls squished into a corner, one a urinal and the other a toilet. Why, we wonder, didn’t they just have a row of urinals (with no stalls, as is the norm)? We can reasonably assume that most people would use the inside bathroom for going number two and three, right? So what is this toilet for? Just in case you had a little more left in the engine? 3.7.

The Final Dump

Here are the averages:

Inside Bathroom: 3.55

Outside Bathroom: 3.88

Overall, these bathrooms aren’t the worst on campus. We’ll concede that on a technical level they’re some of the best, even state-of-the-art if you’d like. But they’re lacking in something: blue but not quite the right one, quiet but deafeningly so, clean but so much so that everything feels sterile. If you ask us, it’s “Ghost in the Shell” without the ghost, so just “the shell.” 

Perhaps it’s an art statement: The synergy of technical perfection and emotional unavailability is a reflection of Amherst’s dating pool, no pun on the blue color intended whatsoever. But it isn’t just the walking red flags and Betty’s Kitchen that suffer from this issue. This robotic, mechanical quality of our new dining hall almost perfectly describes Ford: The building evokes a kind of otherness that makes us feel out of place, something resembling the impersonal scale of an airport and the awkward sterility of a rehabilitative Norwegian prison. It’s a tragedy, one might say, that so much anticipation has led to this.

Thus we return to Shakespeare. While the House of York’s discontent is “made glorious summer by this son of York” (let’s ignore the play’s ending), we can’t say for certain whether the same holds true for our new dining hall and student center. But let’s hope we’re wrong.