(Disclaimer: This article is satire and is not meant to be taken seriously. It does not reflect the views of The Spectator or UW-Eau Claire.)

A quick scroll through social media is commonplace in bathroom stalls around the country in this new era of technology. Sitting on the toilet usually means a person will be sitting for a minute or more doing their business, so one might as well pull their phone out and not let that time go to waste. 

However, this becomes difficult to do without an internet connection.

Many students on campus are running into this exact issue in some of the first floor Centennial Hall bathrooms. The bathrooms in between the 1415 and 1614 lecture halls are where the majority of student complaints are. 

“It’s like a bomb shelter in there,” Jack Lunder, a first-year political science student said. “There is absolutely no WiFi anywhere in that bathroom, I have tried every stall during my constant bathroom breaks.”

Lunder has a political science class at 8 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays in Centennial 1415. He says that it is a shame that such a nice looking bathroom could lack such a basic commodity.

“The building is the newest lecture hall on campus, but I get better connection in the Schofield bathrooms,” Lunder said.

Centennial Hall was opened in 2014 and is the most modern lecture hall on campus. Schofield Hall was opened in 1915 and yet has WiFi in its bathrooms.

Without an internet connection, Lunder does not know what to do in the bathroom.

“It’s almost depressing, just staring at the stall door,” Lunder said. “I go to the bathroom to escape from class for five minutes or more, but the lack of WiFi makes the bathroom feel more like a punishment than a break from class,” Lunder said. 

These WiFi issues aren’t only affecting personal cell phone use, they are also creating some academic issues for students. This is the case for Carrie Erikson, a second-year chemistry student. 

Erickson was recently waiting for her class registration window to open but needed to use the bathroom right before her registration time. She then took her computer into the bathroom with her and was furious to find that she had lost her connection.

“All of my classes were filled during that time, and now I am going to be a semester behind in my major, all because the University cannot put a router in the bathroom,” Erickson said. 

This is definitely a worst-case scenario for a student, but when you gotta go, you gotta go.

“I couldn’t just leave the bathroom either, I was taking the Browns to the Superbowl and knew I would be stuck there for at least 10 minutes,” Erickson said.

Erickson has sent a formal complaint to the Dean of Students in an attempt to make sure this will never happen again to a student. 

“I just want to make sure that my situation is never replicated,” Erickson said. “If a student needs to make an offering to the porcelain throne, that shouldn’t affect their academics in any way.” 

The Tator staff reached out to the Dean of Students for a comment but never received one. 

Doyle can be reached at [email protected]