A message sent by Susan Clayton, building operations coordinator on Hawk Hill, to St. Joe’s staff and administrators at Post Learning Commons on Sept. 15 informed them that facilities management would no longer supply paper towels to university restrooms that have electric hand dryers. 

According to the message, once the current stock of paper towels is finished, St. Joe’s will fully transition to electric hand dryers. 

This information was not communicated to the St. Joe’s student body, which caused confusion among students, according to Milton O’Brien ’25, resident assistant (RA) in Villiger Hall.

“I think that [students] want an explanation a little bit,” O’Brien said. “Just like, ‘This is the reasoning. This is why we were moving with this policy’”.

O’Brien was first made aware of the issue through his involvement with University Student Senate, where they were told that the reasoning for the switch was because of the students’ misuse of paper towels.

In response to a list of emailed questions from the Hawk, Gabrielle Lacherza, associate director of Public Relations at St. Joe’s wrote, “Saint Joseph’s University has returned to pre-pandemic operations. Staff will continue to evaluate operations at the UCity campus.”

There are issues concerning how sanitary electric hand dryers are. In fact, using electric hand dryers to dry your hands may spread germs more than paper towels, according to a study in the journal of Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.

Dr. David A Pegues, professor at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania wrote in response to questions from The Hawk that hot air and jet air dryers have the potential to aerosolize bacteria and viruses, especially when hands are not adequately washed, but that paper towels do not. 

“Dryers and towel dispensers that require manual activation can contaminate your hands,” Pegues said. “Dryers are more carbon neutral than are paper towels. So, whether one method of hand drying is preferable depends on the perspective you take. From the infection control perspective you can reasonably argue that paper towels are preferred over hand dryers.” 

According to Anna Owens ’24, RA in Villiger Hall, the switch from air dryers to paper towels does not seem to be a major concern, just an annoyance for most.

“It’s not the end of the world for sure, it’s just kind of an annoying thing,” said Owens.

Allie Miller ’24 contributed to this story.