Abigail Dunagan, Campus Carrier arts and living editor

I cannot count the number of times that I have been in the library during cold season, and when I needed a tissue the most, I couldn’t find one. After speaking to other students, I have concluded that this is a problem that many people have encountered as well. There are absolutely no tissue boxes in any of the buildings on the Berry campus. Not in the library, not in Krannert, and not in any of the classroom buildings. For me, this is an especially serious issue because I suffer from severe sniffles every time the weather changes. The one thing I need the most during allergy season is a soft tissue to blow my nose into, and there is not one tissue to be found. I have had to resort to getting paper towels out of the bathroom to blow my nose, but these paper towels are so rough and abrasive on the skin that it further prolongs my suffering. 

We are college students, and we have a lot of things going on, especially during finals week. During finals week when the weather is cold, I find that most students have runny noses and sinus issues. Last year during finals week, I often sat with some friends in the library for several hours at a time to study for an upcoming exam. My nose was running so badly that I had to get a pile of napkins from the dispenser at Java City just to blow my nose. Not only was I basically taking napkins from Java that were meant to be used as napkins, but I was giving myself a nose rash from constantly rubbing this abrasive paper against my skin. I was already having a difficult week studying for finals, but I was dealing with allergies, and I couldn’t even blow my nose properly. 

One could make the argument that I should just bring my own tissues, but here is the problem: I live at Oak Hill, so I must drive back and forth to get to my room. If I forget to grab a box of tissues before heading to campus for a study session, I am basically trapped on campus with no tissue access. 

I would like to mention that I think that the people that keep this campus clean do an amazing job. The different buildings on campus are always very well-upkept, and I would just like to thank the housekeeping staff for doing such a great job. We hardly think about small things like the trashcans always being replaced and the bathrooms always being well stocked with paper towels. I feel that a lot of students and staff at Berry could benefit from tissue boxes being available across the different buildings on campus. This is something that is extremely important, but we often don’t give it much thought until we need a tissue, and we can’t find one. I hope that this article can help bring awareness to this issue, and that we can one day have tissue boxes across campus.