Class of '73, and I assume MIT kept them in business.
Did that Springfield Oval toilet paper look like this, a flattened roll?
Oh, a 6-ply roll would last me ages. I budget myself 1 sheet per bowel movement. 1 sheet with 6 plies would give me 12 wipes (using both sides of each ply).
I’m going to shake your hand for telling me about 6-ply paper!
I hope you don’t eat anything that casts a shadow.
Hopefully not with the same hand. 
On an unrelated note, want some M&Ms?
Without getting into gory detail I’ll just say that simply wouldn’t work for me.
The brown ones?
That the stuff. Though ours was not quite as old as the one in the picture. It needs a special holder, as you notice.
When I went back for my reunion last year they seem to have replaced it with slightly more reasonable paper.
Seriously? I thought MIT was full of smart people. Why would they use a flattened roll? Don’t they have circles in Cambridge?
Further Googling leads to this page with a photo of a Springfield Oval dispenser along with an explanation. “This was designed to conserve the amount of paper used in one sitting as the toilet paper automatically stops after 3/4 of a turn and the perforated paper comes off.”
I guess it was so our brilliant ideas didn’t go down the crapper. We fooled them - one of the first things you learned to do in the dorms was figure out how to unwind more than a tiny bit.
So was this some sort of test for new first-year MIT students? To figure out how to hack the toilet paper dispensers to unwind a sufficient amount? They didn’t do that at the nerd school I attended in Troy.
Once upon a time we used “Septic safe, Flushable wipes”. When I got the septic tank emptied later, the guy commented on all the non-degraded wipes filling the tank. Fortunately none (that I know of) made it up into the pipes leading to the drain field but that was enough to put an end to flushing any wipes and I later bought a bidet attachment for the toilet that works great. Was all of $70 or so, so it’s easily paid for itself in not buying packages of wipes and preventing septic issues.
Basically for anything to be flushable it has to disintegrate after a short exposure to moisture. So by definition any sort of pre-moistened wipe is not going to qualify.
I am feeling a bit of francophone-germanophone rivalry here.
Forget about Röstigraben, let’s have a TPgraben!
Plus the trash they generate.
Note that the person who mentioned wipes specifically said “baby wipes”; there are wipes designed specifically for adults. which claim to be flushable (but as noted, really aren’t).
Bidets are the clear choice, environmentally-speaking. We still do use some TP - for drying off.
I use at least 10 squares after I pee. Then I use 10 more. Then I use more as a panty liner.
And why is Charmin twice the price of Cottonelle?
Those bears cost a lot. Formerly, the advertising company recovered some money renting them out to the circus but that’s not an option any longer.
I used to avoid generic toilet paper or paper towels, then I tried Sam’s Club paper products (Maker’s Mark). They are priced like generic, but they are actually superior to the name brands in my opinion.