My least favorite part of waking up in the morning is the stench of leftovers from the dining hall permeating through my room and striking my nostrils. I am lucky enough to have a dorm a few feet away from the window directly above the Grind2Energy system, which turns food scraps into energy.

Now, do not get me wrong: I am totally in favor of environmentally friendly practices. Recycling more? I am on it. Using less plastic? No problem.

But when my life starts being inconvenienced, that is when my activism comes to a screeching halt. 

Is this foul-smelling source of energy truly doing that much to improve the state of our ever-so-quickly deteriorating environment?

Here’s where I’m putting my foot down and saying that the University takes things a step too far. Why is my life falling apart? Because the University is too environmentally friendly. 

There is not a single bathroom in PAR that has paper towels. At first, this was not a huge deal for me. But I soon realized my best attempt at dodging bacteria was out the window. Call me a germaphobe, but I am the type of person that uses my paper towel as a barrier when opening any public restroom door — or any door for that matter. 

After seeing some of the horrors I have seen since dorm living, I really cannot trust that the people leaving bodily fluids in every facet of the bathroom are actually washing their hands afterward. 

Especially after I saw a TikTok video of someone collecting a plate of bacteria from a hot air dryer and letting it grow, the results made me gag. These colonies of bacteria coating my hands after attempting to wash them is probably why I am taken out by sickness every other week.

If you thought I was done complaining about awful smells, you were wrong. Since the University is so environmentally friendly and has a successful agricultural program, the farms south of campus are fertilized with manure — and before you know it, the whole campus smells like animal feces. Talk about a way to ruin a 70-degree and sunny spring day.

At the end of the day, the University does make sure to balance out its carbon footprint at every home football game. We cannot have paper towels or a pleasant-smelling campus, but celebrating with smoke and fireworks is what really counts — right?

Megan is a freshman in Media.

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