How is it Still a (Midd) Thing?

Let’s talk about Battell bathtubs. Seriously. How, how, how are they still a thing? There are currently eleven bathtubs in Battell. Eleven! That’s more than most old people homes, which average 5.7 bathtubs per building. College records show that the last person to have bathed in one of these godforsaken bowls of plague bacteria (composed of 50 percent stale beer, 42 percent broken dreams, and 8 percent actual infectious diseases) was a member of the class of 1954, who did it after losing a bet over whether or not Atwater would ‘throw down’ that night. It didn’t, mostly because it didn’t exist – the loud thumping of a Ke$ha remix was but the faint, questionable whisper of the future. I’m pretty sure bathing in one of the bathtubs would come with one of those super long medical warnings that rambles on and then tells you to see their two page spread in Golf Magazine, where there are even more medical warnings. WARNING: possible side effects of bathing in a Battell bathtub include complete loss of self-esteem, increased right armpit hair growth, memory loss, actually becoming dirtier and the sudden loss of muscle control in the feet. For more information see our ad in this week’s edition of Vineyard Vines Lifestyle Magazine.

Here’s the kicker: these things have existed as basically useless space hogs for years, and they don’t have to be. Bathtubs make pretty good showers; they just need – you know – a shower. A little bit of research revealed that it would probably cost in the region of $400 to convert a tub into a bonafide, useful shower. The bath capability needn’t even be taken away! So, by doing some simple math we can work out that it would cost the College approximately $4,400 to convert every single bathtub in Battell into a shower. To put that into perspective, that’s about 7% of a single student’s annual cost of attendance, or 0.03% of the annual cost of attendance of all of the students in Battell, or just 0.0004% of the College’s endowment. Yup. Midd, could you possibly just splurge a tad for the sake of freshman cleanliness? The entire student body would be grateful. Geez, I just did some actual reporting. I really don’t know how I feel about this.

As a former Battell resident, I actually care about this. A little bit. By all means, keep every other wonderfully dubious Battell hallmark: the sketchy basement beanbags, the sweating walls, the study room that tries its hardest to convince you that there is no joy in this world. Just please turn the bathtubs into showers. Because this is totally something that you should care about, I have started a ‘We The Midd Kids’ petition and will create a petition for every single column I write from now on. Yay for trivial things that really don’t matter! In closing: Battell bathtubs – how are they still a thing? Shout out to Laura Harris for coming up with the Battell bathtubs idea.