By Staff
North Pointe
Grosse Pointe North HS
1st Place
Division 2, News Writing
Editorial
Pardon the bathroom humor, but we need to get down to business.
Bolting up three flights of stairs or rushing to another building to find the nearest open bathroom is a hassle, not to mention you could be missing the important lecture notes in AP U.S. History or the fact that you might be late to Spanish. The warning bell just rang, and the bathroom has a line out the door. You can barely hold it in.
Closing multiple school bathrooms within the past few weeks sparked an influx of rumors and frustration. Students are spreading stories like wildfire. Their annoyance is evident.
Here’s the truth: It’s a maintenance issue. It may not be as stunning and controversial as some would like to believe, but it’s a problem that concerns every student using our bathrooms each day.
Broken pipes, sinks and stalls. Dismembered paper towel dispensers. You name it, and we — along with years of use — have most likely taken part in the wreck-age of it. It’s an unspoken truth: We, as students, have treated our bathrooms with the utmost disrespect.
Despite the small percentage of us who suffer from bladder shyness, the vast majority of students use the bathrooms here. So what are we doing? Who is break-ing all of the sinks? How does one even break a sink?
Then there’s the vandalism. It seems bringing sharpies to the bathroom has become a fad. But please, leave it to social media to provide the hashtags and positivity quotes. Conversations on bathroom stalls can be easily moved to Twitter — a place where we can read other people’s business while we aren’t doing our own.
The bathrooms have been deteriorating for years, and they have finally reached their breaking point. Some bathrooms have only one or two stalls with doors that lock or even remain shut. The majority of them aren’t even functional.
It’s terrifying to imagine the state we leave our bath-rooms in at home if this is how we treat our school.
Students: It’s time for a change. We must treat our rest-rooms with respect. Hardworking custodians spend hours doing their best to make our battered bathrooms look a little less ancient and grotesque. And when we vandalize and carelessly abuse the restrooms that are open, we give administration reasons to close more of them.
Behind every word written on a stall, every tile damaged, there is someone who must sacrifice precious time to repair and clean. People have to clean up after us, and it’s not our mothers. Be mindful.
Administrators: Students had no idea why doors were locked and when they would be reopened.
Closing the science building bathrooms during lunch has brought an added inconvenience. Yes, they are closed for a viable reason — lack of adult supervision and classroom disturbance — but an inconvenience none the less.
To avoid rumors and agitation, administration should have clearly announced the circumstances. It could have been a powerful lesson to students, letting us know that the bathroom debacle is rooted in our own poor behavior.
Meanwhile, administration should have offered alternatives. Cleaning is a necessary evil, but when bathrooms are limited, it should be restricted to before and after school or during times when it is vital.
The need to pee is never going to go away. We need our bathrooms, but we also need to be informed before they suddenly disappear.