Bathrooms at our school have a long history of misuse. If you’ve used the bathroom lately or even just walked inside one, you would be able to tell that something is amiss. Amiss as in, broken stalls, no toilet paper and leaking sinks.

From the girls perspective, there’s always at least one stall that has a broken handle, maybe two. It appears as though none of them have been fixed or even maintained in the last year. In the language hall girls bathroom, the first stall is still missing a lock. The door has continued to swing open and shut upon command since last year at the very least.

It’s not just stalls. Just last quarter, I walked into the bathroom to find that the sink, the air conditioning, or both, were leaking onto the floor. There was about six feet of gross pond on the bathroom floor. I don’t know about you, but that is just a bit too far.

This article, as judgemental as it may be, is not meant to call out the school or administration. This is merely a call to action. If we have to go to school here and learn how to function like adults then the facilities should be up to adult standards.

Part of the solution to that problem is for students to be proactive and let administration know. When I approached Principal Rollin Dickinson about policies and matters relating to this issue, he said, “If we do have, say locks that aren’t working, it’s just helpful to let us know.”

The problem is that if you’re using the restroom at the beginning of class or during passing periods, you can’t just up and leave to go tell office that one of the stalls is missing a door handle. You just find the next available stall for use and move on with your day. This will then continue for the rest of the year because you never have time to go for a leisurely walk down to the main office to tell them that the bathrooms aren’t working.

The school can at the very least devote some time and attention to this issue, and it could start with monthly bathroom checks. This might also kill two birds with one stone as the bathroom being the only unmonitored place in the building gives it the ability to get out of hand.

I understand that the bathroom is a private place, but I don’t want it private to the point of disrepair. Please fix our bathrooms so we can do our business in peace and with the comfort that the door is not going to fly open at any second.