Helen Nethaway-Mindiola has seen it all.

She's seen riots, war protests and students' cries for help.

And she's seen it all from the writings inside a bathroom stall.

Nethaway-Mindiola is a custodial worker who changes sheets of paper in the women's bathroom of the MSU Main Library. Students write on these sheets while they're in the stalls.

"We get everything from insults to one-liners," Nethaway-Mindiola said as she cleaned the bathroom Monday afternoon.

The first floor women's bathroom, across from the Cyber Café, receives a steady stream of traffic.

Those who enter a stall find a 2-by-2 piece of paper covered with advice, lyrics and doodled pictures.

"It's a good place to put things you want to be seen," business and Spanish sophomore Lauren Harman said. Harman said she's never left a message on the wall, but she has read them.

"Obviously people are going to look at them," she said.

The paper first appeared in the stalls 10 to 15 years ago, when the bathroom was redone with new stainless-steel stalls, MSU Libraries Facilities Manager Jim Hensley said.

"They wanted to protect them," he said of his predecessors. "They asked for ideas and at some point decided that instead of letting them carve initials into the wall, they'd let them write it on paper."

The plan worked, Nethaway-Mindiola said. Pausing from her work, she pointed to two hand-washing signs.

"These have been up here for two months and they're untouched," she said. "In other bathrooms, they're either all written over or torn down."

Nethaway-Mindiola changes the paper about once a week. She does it more frequently if someone writes a potentially libelous statement or if something big is going on in the news - before the war with Iraq she was putting up new paper nearly every day.

"There were all these expressions and this let them let off their feelings, but not in a negative way," she said. "Whatever happens on campus, it's like a wave that goes through."

The comments change as the times change, and so does the paper itself. Custodial staff member Ted Minnick said the paper used to be newsprint, then brown packaging paper and finally the thin white sheets used now.

After she replaces the paper, Nethaway-Mindiola keeps some of her favorites. She plans on putting together a book about them some day.

She sets aside other sheets for students doing research projects.

This week, four of the five papers posted were torn down, probably because of increased visits from Homecoming or football visitors, Nethaway-Mindiola said.

She unrolls last week's comments, revealing a phone number for women concerned they're pregnant, lyrics to a Postal Service song and a query: "Is it okay for me to have a girlfriend?"

One of her favorites collected from several years of bathroom duty is a dialogue starting with "MSU breeds rioters." A reply is written below it: "Your parents bred an idiot."

Nethaway-Mindiola said she's concerned publicity will cause an uproar from men wanting paper in their loo.

"There was a protest by the fellows a few years back and we put paper in their bathroom, but some of them got into inappropriate stuff - it just didn't work," she said. "It's really popular.

"I hope people realize that there's so much good that comes out of this."

No one had a definitive reason why other bathrooms don't have similar sheets, but some suggested it would be too expensive or take too much manpower to change the paper.

So for now, it's just Nethaway-Mindiola's job.

"It gives people a laugh," she said. "It could be their only laugh all day - they do so much good."