If you know me, you know that I have a weird obsession with bathrooms. It goes back a long time and definitely has some strange psychologic underpinnings that I’m sure Dr. Freud would have fun discussing. I don’t fight it – I just roll with it.
Several years ago, I had a discussion with Heidi Roizen about her failed attempt to get her name on a bathroom at Stanford during their fundraising drive for a new building on campus. The rejection came with the admonishment that it wasn’t an appropriate thing to do. I laughed and told Heidi – "no problem – I’m sure I can get one at MIT in no time – they are more flexible in their thinking about what is appropriate." Boy was I wrong – I’ve written about the story before on this blog if you are interested. The bottom line is the request apparently went around the system before being crushed by the bureaucracy somewhere at MIT. Their loss.
No such challenge at CU Boulder. I wrote about the immediate response of ATLAS’s director John Bennett to my Stanford / MIT bathroom story. Following is the result a few months later.
That’s me standing in the doorway of the second floor men’s room at ATLAS next to my plaque which says "“The Best Ideas Often Come At Inconvenient Times – Don’t Ever Close Your Mind To Them.”
John – nicely done. The Boulder Daily Camera interviewed me yesterday and wrote a fun story about it, including the punch line from John that ATLAS has seven other bathrooms that have the potential to be named.
MIT – that could have been your money!