Revelations about the unequal distribution of soft-to-the-touch toilet paper caused a splash at Ryerson University this week, prompting the school administration to contemplate flushing its two-tier tissue system.

The school admits that most bathrooms on campus are stocked with one-ply toilet paper, while a select list — including office space for administration executives — are bestowed with plusher, softer two-ply paper.

“The university is looking into this matter,” Ryerson spokesperson Michael Forbes said in an email. “Switching the entire university to two-ply is under consideration.”

The campus newspaper lifted the lid on the school’s unbalanced toilet paper regime in a front page exposé earlier this week.

While the paper reported that the fancy paper is used exclusively on the top two floors of Jorgensen Hall, the location of staff offices including that of the university president, Forbes provided the Star with a list of a dozen other departments on campus that he said are stocked with the premium tissue.

“The majority of campus is one-ply,” he said, adding that this has been the case for more than 10 years. Asked whether students are able to use the two-ply bathrooms, he said, “They certainly have access to some.”

Third-year journalism student Laura Woodward got the scoop for the campus paper, the Eyeopener. In an interview with the Star, the 20-year-old said she started looking into the school’s toilet paper practices in February 2014, when she spotted a package of coveted two-ply rolls among janitorial supplies at the Student Campus Centre.

“I was checking around a lot of bathrooms, and all them were one-ply,” she explained. “I couldn’t really find where the two-ply was … I thought maybe it’s the janitor’s two-ply. Who knows?”

To find out, she called every toilet paper distributor in Toronto and discovered one of them did indeed supply Ryerson with two-ply paper. Woodward then approached the school’s facilities department. When she told them she would file an access-to-information request, she says a university spokesperson contacted her and revealed the toilet paper truth: some people get two-ply; most scrape by with the thinner stuff.

“Some people are calling it first world problems,” Woodward said. “I mean, the majority of people that are getting this toilet paper are on the sunshine list, so that kind of is the reason why people are raising their eyebrows.”

It would cost the school about $80,000 per year to spread two-ply paper across campus, Forbes said. Dispensers in “hundreds” of bathrooms and plumbing in older buildings might need to be retrofitted to accommodate the thicker tissue, he added.

In light of that, Woodward said she’s not expecting to enjoy the bathroom perks of the “Ryerson elite” any time soon.

“I don’t know if Ryerson will go all two-ply,” she said, pointing to the annual price tag of going plush campus-wide. “This is how much more it would cost, which I think would be ridiculous.”

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