Every student that goes to Schrieber is familiar with the unpleasant experience that
comes with going to the bathroom and not being able to even walk in without coming across a
flooded floor, and trash on the ground, in the urinals, and toilets, not to mention in the sinks.
Last year, this was a huge issue, which led the school to make changes regarding the bathroom
maintenance schedules during school days. The school tried to combat this issue by cleaning
the bathrooms during the day. However, these attempts to fix last year’s problem are not
sufficient to keep every bathroom clean as every student’s experiences can attest to. Although
public bathrooms are not supposed to be the cleanest place in the world, there is a certain level
of cleanliness that ought to be maintained.
The best solution to this problem is for each bathroom to be closed to students for a
few minutes every day to be thoroughly cleaned by the custodians. Perhaps this could be done
on a rotating schedule to ensure that no more than one bathroom is closed to students at once.
This will keep the bathrooms cleaner throughout the day, and combined with an effort from
students to keep them cleaner, the bathrooms will never again get to the point where you have
to step over a huge puddle and choose the only toilet that is not flooded with trash.
However, this change cannot only come from the administration. It is essential that
students make an effort to keep the restrooms clean by throwing out their garbage in the trash,
not congregating in the bathroom (as it clogs up space), and only using the room for its intended
purpose.
If the nauseating smell or the trash lining the floor isn’t enough for you to demand some
sort of change, Schreiber’s vaping epidemic definitely is. It is well-known amongst the students
and administration alike that vaping is a serious issue, and that the prime location in Schreiber
to do so is the bathrooms. However, despite the constant pleas for regulations, there has been
little action. Fortunately, companies such as FlySense have developed “vape detectors” that
send an alert directly to the phone of an administrator when a chemical emitted from vaping is
released. These detectors could deter students from congregating in the bathroom, which

would likely lead to less trash buildup throughout the day. The school should invest in these
devices in order to deter students from vaping while also keeping the bathrooms cleaner.