The bathrooms here at school have always been more than just places for students to relieve themselves.  Oftentimes, people are found socializing or simply taking a break in the bathrooms, but more recently students have begun to use the bathrooms for destructive and unsanitary purposes. 

The bathroom should be a place that students can easily and comfortably access. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.  Recently, various obstructions and issues have made the bathrooms difficult to use.  Some urinals in the boys’ bathroom are currently closed off because of damage or flooding issues, and this isn’t the first time it has occured.  Students will intentionally flood the bathrooms, flushing the toilets over and over again.  These practical jokes, along with the age of our bathrooms, make it common for urinals to be out of order.  In addition, there are sometimes random objects in the urinals, such as chairs, that make them unusable.  Chairs are not stored in bathrooms, so it can be assumed that students carried them in and left them in the urinals.  This should not be happening in our school, since it limits bathroom access and reduces the ease with which students can use the bathrooms.  Issues like this can easily be prevented if the school were to increase bathroom regulation.  Of course, signing in and out of class can be frustrating, and might be unnecessary, but the fact that students are able to carry large chairs into the bathroom without being stopped or questioned signals the importance of a change.  Perhaps a closer and more attentive monitoring system could be a solution that would preserve the quality of the bathrooms. 

The issue with obstructions in the bathroom is frustrating, but there are also issues regarding sanitation that warrant some kind of change.  A few weeks ago, some students used the boys’ bathroom to give and receive haircuts.  Not only is this interrupting their time in class, but it is also highly unsanitary.  The bathroom is never a particularly clean place, but efforts to maintain basic standards of cleanliness should be paramount.  Haircuts in the bathroom should not be possible, and to ensure this, the school should implement a greater level of security.  Having a teacher or faculty member outside the bathroom at all times is not always plausible, but the fact that students were able to give and receive haircuts in the bathroom during the school day confirms that the current level of regulation is inadequate.  One potential solution is to institute monitors that rotate more frequently but can more closely regulate who enters the bathroom and guarantee that students do not bring in unnecessary tools or objects.