An epidemic has hit the halls of West Essex. Our students cannot seem to keep the bathrooms clean. This rising problem has led to administration locking all of the bathrooms during passing periods in an attempt to teach students a lesson about respect. While it makes sense for the administration to take action against this and discipline students, preventing students from using the bathroom during passing periods, in turn forcing them to miss class time instead, is not the answer.
We learned the basic rules of proper etiquette in elementary school: Keep your hands to yourself, be nice to others and respect things that aren’t yours. If we could do it when we were 5, surely we can do it now. It shouldn’t be a huge challenge for people ages 14 to 18 to not throw toilet paper on the floor and not draw all over the stalls. It is unfair to our janitors to be destroying the space and leaving behind a mess for them to clean up. And what purpose does this action even serve? There has to be other ways for students to entertain themselves besides being destructive. We are no longer in elementary school, where the excuse of having too much pent up energy can be applied to bad behavior. Continuing this immature behavior forces administration to treat us like children, regulating our bathroom time beyond what should be necessary for people our age.
This is not to say that the perfect solution is closing the bathrooms during passing periods. If people are going to misbehave in the bathrooms during the five minute intervals between classes, they are also going to do it during class time. A teacher sitting outside the room does not stop this behavior, which makes the current solution ineffective. The administration’s attempt to provide a remedy has failed to stop the vandalism while simply irritating the students, most of whom have nothing to do with the problem.
In addition to there being no bathroom access between classes, we still have the problem of finding that sometimes bathrooms that are supposed to be open will be locked because a teacher isn’t there to open them. Students are then forced to walk halfway around the building to find an open bathroom, missing more class time and irritating both themselves and their teachers. We understand the limited resources to monitor the bathrooms, but having a teacher to unlock the bathrooms when they’re supposed to be open should be a top priority, even if the teacher isn’t available to sit there the whole time. If the administration wants to have strict policies on when they lock the bathrooms, they have to have the same attitude toward keeping them unlocked as well.
In reality, there is no easy solution to the vandalism problem other than students growing up and keeping their spaces clean. Administration is doing their best to mitigate the problem, but their solution is negatively affecting all students, the majority of which have nothing to do with the problem. We should not all have to miss valuable class minutes because of the behavior of the few. In the end, no restrictive policy is going to make meaningful change; it is on our fellow students to decide for themselves to be more respectful.
