The American Spectator site has posted Clint Taylor’s account of Yale College’s introduction of soap on a trial basis to three of its twelve undergraduate residential colleges: “Boolo loo blues.” What’s the difference between a dormitory and a residential college? “Around twenty-five thousand bucks a year,” Taylor explains parenthetically.
Soap, however, is only the pretext for Taylor’s exploration of the reeducation campaign reflected in the policies governing the bathrooms of the residential colleges at Yale. Taylor concludes with a call to action:
[W]ith attention on those newfangled soap dispensers in Yale’s bathrooms, maybe it’s time students, parents, and alumni renewed pressure on the administration to take account of the basic standards of civilization. Both its long struggle against soap and its clueless coed-bathroom policy reveal a flabbergasting arrogance. Apparently the everyday social norms, or if you prefer, the “self-withholding, bourgeois notions of privacy,” that the rest of us take for granted just don’t apply to the Ivy League.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.