It was the best of flushes, it was the worst of flushes; it was the age of comfort, it was the age of thriftiness; it was the epoch of relief, it was the epoch of inequality; it was the season of one-ply, it was the season of two-ply; it was the beginning of a new roll, it was getting down to the last square; we were all going direct to the bathroom on the top floor, we were all watching our dreams go down the toilet.

Such were the dramatic terrors and inequities revealed in an investigation published in a student newspaper at Ryerson University in Toronto last week. A tenacious student reporter discovered that those in positions of power at the college had been hoarding a treasure that students were desperate for, creating a system of plumbing inequality.

The blockbuster story on Water Closet–gate begins, “There’s two-ply toilet paper at Ryerson — and if you’re a student, you don’t get any.”

The Eyeopener discovered a box of the two-ply goodness on the bottom of the Student Campus Centre (SCC), which raised questions of which bathrooms they’re used in.

Student washrooms are stocked exclusively with that translucent, gotta-fold-it-thirteen-times one-ply.

The top two floors of Jorgenson Hall — 13 and 14 — carry the thick, absorbent two-ply.

The story is accompanied by an infographic titled “Unflushing Toilet Paper: A Ryerson Tissue.”

The university president, Sheldon Levy, whose office is “steps away from the two-ply supplied bathroom,” told the Ryerson Eyeopener that the revelation of a “two-tiered” toilet system was “shocking” and “embarrassing.” The National Post did some follow-up reporting and found that other universities in Ontario have a far fairer system when it comes to distribution of strategic reserves of extra-soft and quilted wealth. An official at the University of Guelph bragged, “We have one-ply tissue campus wide, from the president’s washroom to the student residences.”

And when I was a student there, I regularly stole toilet paper. One-ply. There was a metal clip that needed to be depressed and the roll would slide off.