To this day, the symbol of one of my proudest accomplishments is a changing table on my college campus.
It’s nothing special really. Just a standard plastic thing attached to a wall. Perfectly forgettable in every way—unless you’re one of those people who needs to change a baby. This wasn’t exactly my top concern as a student while I was frantically tackling endless stacks of homework, yet one little lunch changed all that.
Between classes, my friend and I sometimes met at the Underground (a little cafeteria-style place that was smack in the middle of the University of Kansas). More often than not, she had her baby with her. She and her partner both attended school there, so they’d arranged their classes to make sure one of them was always free. It was a fairly brilliant arrangement, and one they made work impressively well.
However, it still posed some unique challenges.
After we finished lunch one day, my friend started changing her baby’s diaper right there in the middle of the dining tables. Before I could ask about this peculiar choice, a manager came by and told us the baby could not be changed anywhere but the bathrooms. When my friend pointed out that there were no changing tables in the closest bathroom—or anywhere else in the building for that matter—the manager basically shrugged and repeated the warning.
Digging into all the dirty details
Though I left for class shortly after, the interaction stuck with me throughout the day. I started taking detours between activities so that I could tour every bathroom I came across to see if there was a changing table in any of them.
The first and only one I found? All the way on the edge of campus at the student union.
As for the bathroom that my friend was explicitly told to use, it was honestly downright dangerous. In order to create a trendy-feeling ambience, the bathroom lighting was extremely dim, and it had been designed in industrial style that lacked even the tiniest hint of counter space. The layout was crowded, and it was basically made of blind corners, asking for anyone who considered kneeling on the floor to get tripped over or kicked.
At the time, I wrote for the opinion section of my university’s student-run newspaper. I was in a bit of a Jonathan Swift phase, using satire to take aim at everything from the silly to the serious.
So, utterly enraged, I picked up my pen and went to work.
Being the change(-ing table) I wanted to see in the world
When the article appeared I was excited. It was basically a cheeky list of suggestions for ever-more-ridiculous places my friend could change her baby (such as midair and over the toilet), and I considered it some of my best work to date.
The excitement faded fast, though, when the world moved on like normal, and I realized that despite my biting words, I had failed to rock the university to its core. No one hurried to submit a statement or apology to parents everywhere, and I started feeling pretty silly for ever thinking my one little article would lead to anything at all.
Except that, it turned out, something did change.
A few weeks later, entirely without fanfare, a changing table appeared in the Underground’s bathroom.
Chances are, you can fix something
Let’s be clear here: I don’t have any delusions about this being some world-changing accomplishment. All I did was successfully get a changing table installed in a single building on a campus that remained wildly inaccessible to parents. It had a big impact for my friend and for other parents eating on campus, but it wasn’t like that table fundamentally fixed every challenge they faced.
Even so, it was the first time that my writing inspired direct, tangible change.
Somewhere, somehow, my article had made it to the hands of someone with the power to buy and install a changing table in that bathroom… and they’d actually done it. As a student who so often felt powerless in an uncaring world, it was that little spark of hope that I needed.
Far too often lately, I’ve found myself feeling powerless just as I did back then. I get overwhelmed by the amount of the world that needs fixing, and despite logically knowing it’s impossible to tackle it all, I still feel like somehow, I should be able to.
But then, I remember the changing table. I remember how one focused message led to a change that had real, immediate benefits for people involved.
Sure, I can’t fix the whole world. None of us can.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t change it one step at a time.
Photo by Pranch/Shutterstock
