Is an EMUTalk toilet on campus inevitable?

Posted on February 6, 2012 by | 2 Comments

Also in Inside Higher Ed this morning is this story about colleges selling the naming rights to bathrooms.  Here’s a quote:

In a brazen effort to raise funds, Dixie State offered naming rights to individual bathroom stalls in a musical theater company’s planned building. The college wanted to help the troupe, which had moved on campus after being evicted from its previous stage, raise money for a new home somewhere else.

The St. George Musical Theater is now out of business, apparently having come up a few urinals short of its fund-raising goal. Also gone is the Web page announcing the lavatory sponsorships, which college officials edited Friday after being alerted to its existence by a reporter.

Laugh if you want, but Dixie State isn’t the first cash-hungry college to seek money for bathrooms.

The story goes on to describe how a $100,000 donation to the Harvard Law School created the “Falik Men’s Room” there.

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2 Responses to Is an EMUTalk toilet on campus inevitable?

  1. Germaine | February 6, 2012 at 1:24 pm | Reply

    Why stop there? Why not have a brick, light switch, doorknob, staircase, etc… dedicated in one’s honor? The possibilities are practically endless!

  2. cmadler | February 7, 2012 at 5:22 am | Reply

    This is old news.

    http://www.colorado.edu/atlas/about/news/feldcamera.html (January 2008)

    It’s an offer the University of Colorado couldn’t flush away: A Boulder venture capitalist paid $25,000 for the naming rights to a bathroom in the Boulder campus’ ATLAS building.

    And so it is that the second-floor men’s bathroom in the high-tech hub now has Brad Feld’s name on it and a plaque with some words of wisdom from the donor: “The best ideas often come at inconvenient times. Don’t ever close your mind to them.”

    Feld — managing director at Foundry Group and Mobius Venture Capital, both based in Boulder — said he tried to make a similar offer a few years ago to his alma matter, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But the school, after considering whether a donor could have naming rights to a bathroom, rejected his offer.

    “I just wanted a plaque outside of the men’s room to inspire people as they walk in to do their business,” Feld said.

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