There is currently a humorous art exhibition going on in the Holmes Student Center Gallery called, “101 Uses for a Turd.”

Unfortunately for residents of some NIU dorms, it looks like someone has found an unfortunate 102nd use.

Imagine it’s 3 a.m. after a long Saturday. You go to your floor’s bathroom to splash cold water on your face. You are about to put your hands under the water. Then you see something is clogging the sink. It looks like someone cleaned their shoes in the sink or dropped a melted chocolate bar in there. But it’s not dirt and it’s certainly not chocolate.

“Quite honestly my first reaction was: ‘Holy sh*t,'” said Leonard Mongerie, a freshman computer science major.

Others did not find it so funny.

“It was really disgusting,” said Meghan Wampler, a freshman athletic training major, who was one of the first to see this latest, unfortunate form of vandalism. “I think it’s gross that someone would do something like this, and it is really irresponsible and unsanitary.”

On Oct. 7, Wampler came upon a sink clogged with feces in the ladies washroom on the seventh floor in Grant Towers North’s C-Tower. A similar incident happened recently on the second floor of Lincoln Hall’s D-Wing. Neither floor’s Community Adviser could comment due to policy.

Unsanitary is right. According to http://www.health.net.nz, feces carry parasites, bacteria and viruses. Common infections from exposure to feces include giardia, a parasitic infection of the small intestine, which may cause vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, fever, headache and appetite loss; E. coli, a bacterium which can be life-threatening; Hepatitis A and B, viruses that attack your liver, and shigella, salmonella and amebiasis, infectious diarrhea caused by bacteria.

“Those who don’t know how to use a toilet shouldn’t be admitted to NIU. That should be a requirement, like an ACT score,” freshman business major Jonathan Hemm said.