Awkwardly Funny

In the article Bathroom Politics: Introducing Students to Sociological Thinking from the Bottom Up,   sociology professor Edgar Alan Burns describes some reasons why toilet paper politics is worthy of examination. On the first day of Burns’ introductory course in sociology, he asks his students, “Which way do you think a roll of toilet paper should hang?” In the following fifty minutes, the students examine why they picked their answers, exploring the social construction of “rules and practices which they have never consciously thought about before”. They make connections to larger themes of sociology, including gender roles, the public and private spheres, race and ethnicity, social class, and age.