Having to pee outside class time, as Robbie Lifson ’27 posited last week in his article on classroom etiquette, verges on the creation of a bladder surveillance state. Would we really be OK with having a socially imposed pissing panopticon? I certainly wouldn’t. 

I, too, have seen my fair share of poorly behaved classmates. As Lifson might have more poetically put it, we may truly be going to college in a blighted orchard, full of bad apples. I have innocently looked over too many shoulders to see videos playing on laptops, so-called “students” knee-deep in the 10th page of a store’s online catalog or secretly holding their phone behind a computer screen. 

Now, I’m no rat, but I’m certainly not for this kind of behavior. Your class may not always be the most engaging, but there’s a reason you signed up for it — even if that reason is a diversification requirement — and so you’re there to learn, most of all. 

Lifson, though, includes leaving class to use the restroom in his list of disruptive behaviors. Now, in small classes, in especially important scenarios such as presentations or when otherwise specified, getting up to leave really can be a noticeable distraction that should be taken seriously. However, even when it’s not an emergency, sometimes I’m just a bit uncomfortable; the bladder’s been filling, and, consequently, I’m not doing my best work. Staring down the next 45 minutes or so of class, why wouldn’t I relieve myself in an effort to be a more attentive class participant? Sure, I should have gone before class, but let’s live in the now a little, good grief!

Peeing is not a moral act, and should not result in a judgment of the soul. If you are leaving class regularly to scroll or wander absentmindedly, be damned, but let’s not discount bodily care under the label of social deviance. 

Wyatt Strawbridge ’27 is an English and Russian major from Haverford, PA. He can be reached at strawbridge1@kenyon.edu.