Bucknell’s infamous paper towel mystery: seemingly trivial but one of the first things many came to notice (and take for granted) upon arriving to dorm life at Bucknell.

First, you either go to the bathroom to brush your teeth, take a shower or wash your hands and then automatically go to the paper towel dispenser, only to remember that in the dorm bathrooms, the dispenser is merely a piece of decor. You slowly move to the air dryer but wish there were towels to clean up the puddle of water surrounding the sink, dry your wet shower caddy or dry your hands better.

On second thought… maybe skip the dryer and shake your hands out, or even rub them on your pants. The reality is that air dryers are extremely unsanitary and expel bacteria into the air while increasing cross-contamination of germs. Regardless, if the dorm bathroom lacks paper towels, in homage to Bucknell’s mission of maintaining sustainability, why do all of the other bathrooms on campus–Holmes Hall, Academic West, Vaughn, etc. have an abundance of paper towels?

Even the unfrequented third-floor library bathroom has an extra roll of paper towels for people to use! The gym and dorm common areas also have multiple stacks of paper towels scattered around to clean desks and equipment. All in all, Bucknell’s paper towel policy appears to have a gaping hole and selective interest in the environment… why do paper towel dispensaries not produce paper towels in dorm halls, where paper towels are arguably needed more than other campus restrooms?

What is interesting is that not all dorm halls appear to be the same–some students have noted that there are paper towels in their dorm halls–so why not all? 

The discrepancy and inconsistency of paper towel distribution mirrors my high school’s illogical COVID policy, which required students to wear a mask when throwing out food, yet everyone had their mask off when they were eating. 

Environmental policies can be confusing–why promote sustainability and make only half attempts to truly incorporate sustainability? Why only ban towels from particular bathrooms when others have more than enough paper towels to serve other bathrooms? Similarly, an abundance of businesses nowadays only use paper straws in the name of the environment, yet still use plastic cups and packaging and sell plastic bottled drinks. 

Is there a major impact of these policies?

It is indisputable: the lack of paper towels in a dorm bathroom is a shallow first-world problem, and we will survive using the recycled air of the hand dryer.

Yet, in the grand scheme of things, it is not about the paper towels–it is about the precedent.