An Op-Ed written by your white, privileged Editor
If you are reading this and know that I exist in some physical form beyond just the words I put down on this page, then there is a chance you have spotted me occasionally roaming the halls of our school.
This is most likely because I still haven’t found a vacant restroom. As of now only four of the six stalls are functional, but it might as well be two because the men’s restroom near the theater seems to close on an almost weekly basis, and the ones that aren’t closed are often occupied by vaping foursomes.
Over the past two months, the men’s restrooms have been closed on several occasions for a couple different reasons, including not only the littering of paper towels, but also their highly visionary utilization of those towels to spell out profanity on the floors.
When I to Principal Danny Rock, it seemed evident that even he had lost track of the reasons behind their closure.
I myself have recently witnessed an elevated level of creativity in vandalism within that bathroom. From half-eaten lunches resting behind toilets, to salads floating around in clogged sinks, to last year’s fecal encounter — in which some of us got the pleasure of discovering a rare mound in the toilet paper dispenser — it is evident that this problem extends far beyond a few wasted paper towels.
Regardless of the obscenity of these instances, any form of vandalism is frowned upon, and it seems clear that something needs to be done about it. I know it affects more people than just me, as evidenced by the frequency with which I have seen students simply standing around and waiting to use the restroom. This can ultimately detract from our time spent in class and could lead to unwarranted teacher suspicion when a student returns to class after fifteen minutes of waiting.
The rise of vandalism can be traced to last school year, when stall doors in both the upstairs and downstairs men’s restrooms were taken down by some students who thought they were disciples of Tarzan and decided to swing from them (yes, we’re still talking about high schoolers and bathroom stall doors).
As Rock has confirmed, this was one of the most destructive and expensive incidents of vandalism the administration has witnessed in recent memory. These doors — apparently weighing more than 200 pounds — crashed into the walls, collapsing a significant portion of the sheet rock.
While vandalism in the men’s restrooms didn’t get worse in degree from then on out, the frequency of incidents did increase.
In addition to the aforementioned incidents, a substance problem has now arisen in the restrooms: vaping. Although not a form of vandalism, it is arguably just as reprehensible, if not worse.
If you will recall, on Thursday, Nov. 30, fifth period was interrupted by a fire alarm going off in one of the boys’ restrooms. Intel from both teachers and students — as well as Rock himself — seems to indicate that it was a vaping device that set off the alarm.
Yes, the fire alarm incident has been — at least so far — an isolated incident, but vaping in itself has been a rampant issue in the restrooms regardless. In the past couple weeks alone, I have been followed into the restroom by a group of vapists (or whatever they call themselves) plenty of times.
Coincidentally, the restrooms in which these people vape are usually the ones with the permanently open stalls that no one uses (I guess it’s good to know who actually benefits from the destructive vandalism in our school).
While there is no one easy or effective solution for either the vandalism or the vaping — cameras in bathrooms would be inappropriate, while some sort of detector seems like an expensive proposition — this issue is definitely up there in terms of school-wide problems.
As such, everyone from faculty to students should be vigilant of this problem and encourage others who are abusing their privilege to really think about the far-reaching consequences of their actions.
Furthermore, with the introduction of the all-gender restrooms next month, this issue could be exacerbated.
The purpose of the all-gender bathroom is to accommodate those who don’t feel comfortable in gendered, binary-adherent bathrooms. However, if the vaping and vandalism problems continue in the upstairs bathroom, even after it has been made gender-inclusive — and this very well might happen, considering that some people are opposed to the change — and the administration starts closing the all-gender bathroom, then it defeats the purpose of having an all-gender bathroom in the first place.
I understand this is all hypothetical at this point, but someone has to start asking these questions before the situation gets any worse. And while I believe that our high school community is generally a very respectful one, we cannot keep trying to solve recurrent problems with temporary solutions.
