By JESSE DUNSMORE

Senior Reporter

Doug Rice graduated from Oakland University in 2005 with a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. Now, as a member of the the Detroit Ignition soccer team, he recently became a published author. His book “From the Stall” contains nearly 140 photos of bathroom stall graffiti. The Oakland Post caught up with Rice via telephone while he was taking a break from reading stall inscriptions in California.

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The Oakland Post: At what point did you first think, “Hey, I could make a book out of bathroom graffiti?”

Doug Rice: I think it must have been finals week. I was studying forever, and I needed to … swing by “the office.” So I go down to the bottom floor of Kresge Library, and in the stall I’m reading on the wall, it says, “Rick Moranis has enormous horse balls.”

I was just so baffled and confused that anybody would even think of something like that, let alone write it on the stall wall, I just thought it was brilliant.

I was thinking it’d make a great home bathroom reading book, to be able to enjoy photographs of all this stuff people write in public bathrooms in the comfort of your own home.

Post: Did you immediately start collecting research?

Rice: I went around OU a few times; I went around Michigan State, Michigan. I didn’t really quite have the financial means to travel the country. There’s one from Montana, there’s one from Boston. I went to Greece soon after I had the idea, so I had my camera handy and I snagged a few from there.

Post: Will the Greek ones mean anything to us?

Rice: No. But they are funny.

Post: During the course of collecting your material, did anyone look at you kind of, you know … oddly?

Rice: Yeah. I was really apprehensive. If someone was in a stall, I’d leave and come back. I didn’t want them to see a flash in the stall next to them and wonder what I was doing. I didn’t really want to broadcast to everybody what I was doing, because it’s kind of bizarre.

Sometimes I’d have to take multiple pictures before I’d get a usable one. Sometimes I’d be in a stall for a minute or two and someone would come in the bathroom. So I’d have to sit and wait it out to leave. I think I kept it pretty discrete for the most part.

Post: Which university’s got the best graffiti — the amount or the quality?

Rice: Oakland’s right up there, and Western was right up there. How much and the best, in a way, go hand-in-hand. The best building for Oakland could be South Foundation Hall, or SEB has a lot too. And the main floor of O’Dowd.

Post: How many samples of lavatory artwork are in the book?

Rice: I think there’s 137 pictures of bathroom stall graffiti, and at the end of the book, I included a part called “Shooting Blanks.” It’s like, six or seven pictures of blank dirty stall walls.

And hopefully, after the reader’s been inspired by reading the previous pages, they can write their own graffiti into the book. It’s definitely geared toward a dorm, where you’ve got a roommate or suitemates you share the bathroom with. You can write each other notes.

Post: Do you have a personal favorite?

Rice: [The Rick Moranis one] might be my favorite, just because it started the whole thing. But there was another one from U-M which was pretty creative. It said, “Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you criticize him, you’ll be a mile away, and you’ll have his shoes.” There’s one from [Kresge Library] that says, “My nipples sweat when I eat ham.”

Post: Did you see a lot of nasty, racist, just plain-old not-funny stuff in the stalls?

Rice: Oh, yeah, and I definitely included some racial, some political, everything. I wanted to get the whole gamut of bathroom stall atmosphere. I didn’t want to discriminate against a piece of graffiti. There’s a few racial ones, but it goes both ways. If somebody writes something, someone else writes a rebuttal.

Post: What do you think inspires someone to leave a deeply political or racial thought on a stall wall?

Rice: That’s a good question. I really have no idea why. I don’t know. Once one person does it, it makes it that much easier for other people to leave another comment. Sometimes I’d see peoples’ writing on the stall wall, making fun of people writing on the stall wall.

Post: Thanks again for the best interview of my life.

Rice: You’re welcome, and thank you.

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Rice’s book is available at his Web site, www.fromthestall.com. Visitors to the site can also submit their own restroom graffiti photos, which Rice says may even make it into his next book.