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September 25, 2006
Welcome to the 20th century
I'm not entirely sure what took this school so long to come up with this idea, or exactly why it's novel:
A university that has been searching for more effective ways to get out student information is taking their message to the toilets.
Palm Beach Atlantic University's blue newsletters, called Stall Talk, now hang above urinals and on stall doors in most campus restrooms.
Administrators at the Christian-based school said e-mails, posters and campus bulletin boards were just too easy to ignore.
Among the headlines in this month's issue: "Getting Along with your Roommate," "Top 5 Places to Eat Off-campus" and "Top 10 Reasons to Consider Joining Campus Recreation Activities."
Being the gentleman that I am, I've never set foot in a ladies' room, so I can't say for certainity what goes on there. But I can say for sure that at least 50% of bars/restaurants put the sports page in front of the urinal (because nobody wants to read the Metro section when peeing, I guess.) If there's not a newspaper on the wall, there's an advertisement. So it's not exactly a crazy idea to put the student newsletter in the bathroom.
Nevertheless, I have to wonder how successful this will be. I don't know about you, but if I am going to spend some quality time in the bathroom, I am bringing some reading material with me. Back in the day when I was gainfully employed, If I had the misfortune to need to use the bathroom at work for something other than peeing, I did one of two things: I borrowed a magazine out of the lounge/kitchen, or I printed some interesting newspaper articles off the internet. I preferred the latter because I could read something interesting, and then I didn't have to be seen walking out of the men's room with a six-month old copy of People magazine. If my habits are like anybody else's, I would suspect that nobody is going to read the stall newspaper because they already have their own reading material.
Maybe I am overanalyzing this as well, but isn't a newsletter taped to the door of the stall too far away to read when sitting on a toilet? I try to avoid sitting in public bathroom stalls as much as possible, but in my experience the door is too far away to read something in anything but large type.
Posted by oz115 at September 25, 2006 09:43 PM