Yale University is seeking the culprit now dubbed the campus “poopetrator,” who’s been befouling students’ laundry, by adding human feces to clothes dryers.
The coprophiliac, sometimes called “the brown bandit,” has struck at least four times in the last month, in the laundry room at Saybrook College. Saybrook Master Paul Hudak said, “We have asked our students not to leave their laundry unattended, the affected machines have been thoroughly disinfected and we are actively seeking information about who the perpetrator might be. That’s about all we can do.”
Coprophilia, which basically translates to “excrement fondness” in classical Greek, is an abnormal interest in fecal matter. Hudak says campus police are investigating, and Yale has been considering restricting laundry room access.
Student Lucy Fleming said that when she’d opened a dryer on September 7th, she found her clothes soiled and peed upon. She’d tried to rewash them, to ill avail. “I simultaneously wanted to throw up, cry and punch someone,” Fleming said.
The poopetrator struck again last Friday, that time hanging up a bunch of soiled garments on a clothesline in a courtyard at Berkeley College. The culprit even went on to alert students about it.
Yale sophomore David Steiner commented, “Some people think the whole thing is funny; some think it is scary; and everyone thinks it is gross.” Steiner added that he’d received two emails from an unknown person, calling himself or herself “Copro Philiac.”
The Centers for Disease Control recently published a report revealing that poop is present in 58% of public pools. Though the report failed to encompass fecal rates concerning clothes dryers, it reveals that chlorine and disinfectants don’t kill germs instantly – so it’s likely best not to attempt to merely rewash soiled clothing.
Image via Wikimedia Commons.