Bidets make their debut at UTM
A story of advocacy and cooperation—the washrooms of UTM’s Student Centre now have bidets.
On September 17, the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) Students’ Union (UTMSU) and the Muslim Students’ Association (MSA) announced the arrival of four new bidets in the Student Centre. One was installed in each men’s and women’s washroom on the first floor, one in an all-gender washroom on the second floor, and one in the washroom in the multi-faith prayer room.
The new bidets come after a months-long student-led campaign by the tri-campus advocacy group Bidets At U of T, the UTMSU, and the MSA.
Many students see bidets, or at least washing with water, as basic sanitation. It is the norm for many families from Asia, parts of Europe, Latin America, and various religious communities, such as Muslims and Hindus.
Without access to a bidet on campus, many students opt to bring water bottles to the washroom or outright choose not to go, a common story among testimonies collected by Bidets At U of T over the past year.
The Medium interviewed representatives of Bidets at U of T, the UTMSU, and the MSA to unravel the story of how bidets were finally installed in the Student Centre.
Aliya Shaikha, a recent graduate of U of T Scarborough (UTSC) and founder of the Bidets At U of T movement, and Adam El-Falou, third-year advocacy director of the MSA and a UTMSU board member, explained that there is an expectation for students to assimilate.
“We learn to adapt rather than [push for] change,” El-Falou said. “We’re all thinking the same thing; it’s just a matter of someone vocalizing it. And that was Aliya.” Not only did she put it into words, she organized it as data.
In August last year, four bidets were installed in UTSC’s Student Centre. “The demand was insane,” she noted. “People had to wait 30 minutes in line during peak hours.” But UTSC was still on the fence about installing more.
When Shaikha asked campus administrators if they needed her to collect surveys to prove demand was high enough to warrant more bidets, they said not to worry about it.
Shaikha made a survey and started collecting responses anyway. She also started the Instagram account @bidets_at_uoft and messaged the MSA, the UTMSU, and the UTMSU. After receiving no response, she travelled to UTM in April to search for student representatives in person. That’s when she met El-Falou by chance. “She actually came to CCT—I was just chilling,” he recalled. Shaikha proposed the idea and handed him posters with her survey’s QR code.
Responses flooded in throughout the summer. Adam became a UTMSU board member, and during a training meeting in June, he mentioned the bidet project to UTMSU Vice President of University Affairs Manaal Fatima. Fatima later told UTMSU President Andrew Park, whose response was simply: “That sounds pretty doable.” They emailed El-Falou a few weeks later, saying they wanted to take the bidet project seriously and got in touch with Shaikha.
Bidets had been proposed before by the Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Office, but the idea was turned down by the university. The team understood that the only building where they had the power to install bidets was the Student Centre, which is managed by the UTMSU. “I thought of doing a pilot project, one bidet in each washroom, just to see how it goes,” explained UTMSU General Manager Shane Madhani, who oversaw the bidets’ installation.
The union got in touch with plumbers, and logistics were sorted out. The Student Centre has commercial toilets, which drove up installation costs. “It came to like six, seven hundred per,” Park explained. This is compared to residential bidets, which cost around C$100 to C$150 to install.
A brief delay came when Facilities Management & Planning objected to the installation. “[They said] ‘hey, you didn’t get permission,’” Park recalled. “Their worry was for caretaking—the cleanup and maintenance issues. When people use bidets, there may be water on the ground.”
Nevertheless, due to insightful planning and smooth cooperation, UTM officially had bidets by orientation week. According to Park, the bidets have been working perfectly, and there have been no cases of misuse.
The success of bidets at the Student Centre could pave the way for bidet installation in other buildings on campus. “If we’re going to call ourselves a world-class institution, then we should be able to live up to that aim with the services that we provide to students,” Park asserted.
Shaikha has since been contacted by students from universities around the world, including Harvard, Waterloo, and the University of Michigan, just to name a few, who also want bidets. She explained that she’s starting with universities, but she envisions expanding to hospitals and eventually residential buildings in the future.
