Pandemonium erupted in the Cuesta cafeteria last week upon the discovery that the infamous Team Rocket, a criminal organization long believed to have disbanded, had vandalized a nearby men’s bathroom. At least, that’s what the unidentified Rocket Grunt may have wished would happen upon marking the door of the disabled access stall with the spray-painted initials “TR,” though what purpose an organization would have in committing such a pointless act that only a small percentage of an already halved-by-gender student body could see is beyond me.

More likely, Theodore Roosevelt’s ghost, during a break between sit-ins on history lectures allowing him to reminisce about the good old days got bored and couldn’t think of anything better to do. For whatever reason the presumably male perpetrator of this pathetic crime apparently thought it was good enough to go ahead with it, but it’s pretty moot now that the paint’s been completely removed.

As I poked around the grounds attempting to find someone to tell about the still-wet paint I got to thinking about how annoying it is to be greeted with this sort of thing when making an already reluctant visit to a public bathroom. Admittedly, a yellow “TR,” despite its size, is much less tacky than the sort of uncomfortable conversations generally going on atop the toilet paper dispenser in several of Cuesta’s bathrooms, a fault not of an already probably very busy maintenance crew but instead the bored, entitled students keeping the silent chatter going. Afraid of dropping their phones into the porcelain prisons below but sure that someone, somewhere simply MUST hear about the joke their clogged bowels suddenly inspired them to make, years of academic training on the shape builds up to works of art heightening an already massive sense of germaphobia that naturally comes with using a public restroom.

Does it make you feel good, “TR” and company, to know that your 15 minutes of fame are here? Or was your act a panicked existential flailing in the horrible fear that 15 minutes was all you were ever going to get? Are you less bothered bullying random custodians you’ll never knowingly have interacted with through these inked proxies than through face-to-face assery, or does it perhaps never occur to you that either a) someone must and will remove your selfish defacing of property that was never yours OR b) you’ll forever be making an already stressful day of college that much worse for someone when nature calls?

Contributer Chris White-Sanborn would say he’s pissed off, but prefers not to give TR the satisfaction of a pun. Send collegiate news to [email protected].