High school bathrooms are never the cleanest places. There will be some times when you walk in and they don’t look half bad, but then there are other times when you see writing on the walls, toilet paper on the floor, and across the stall, or they’re simply not clean due to kids through the school making them messy. Custodians work every morning and afternoon to ensure that we’re able to have clean bathrooms throughout the day. We can’t imagine how they feel about having to walk into those same bathrooms and see their hard work disregarded after only a few hours.

“I could go in and clean the bathrooms and come back 15 to 20 minutes later with the same things on the floor: tissues and papers. It’s just inconsiderate,” said custodian Eric Gause.

Our custodians work every day to maintain the quality of our school. They clean our bathrooms multiple times daily, the hallways, our classrooms, and take out every trash can. Sometimes, it is very frustrating for them when they have just cleaned a bathroom, and then ten minutes later, they have to go re-clean due to a mess made by a student.

“I see all kinds of things, especially in the boy’s bathroom when they put things like underwear and clothing in the toilets,” said custodian Jennifer Thomas. “It makes me mad when I see a bathroom I just cleaned messed up 20 minutes later.”

Many of our custodians believe that it is very disrespectful to do so because they’re sure that those students don’t treat their bathrooms at home like that. Some students agreed that it is disrespectful and very immature.

“Whenever I walk into a bathroom and see that it’s a mess, I just think to myself, how can some people be so inconsiderate,” said senior Riley Davis. “It’s very disrespectful for students to make them look like that simply because they don’t have to clean it up.”

When you walk into a girls’ bathroom at any school, you might see writing on the walls that is talking badly about someone or something, paper towels or toilet paper strung all over the place, and occasionally different hygiene products that are not disposed of correctly. In boys’ bathrooms, there’s usually urine on the floor and the same toilet paper or paper towels scattered throughout, along with inappropriate writing on the walls.

“I’ve seen a lot of crazy things in my time working here, but the bathrooms are what blow my mind the most,” said assistant principal Karla Stanley. “I just can’t believe everything that some of these students will do to the bathrooms.”

The vandalizing of our bathrooms is disrespectful not only to our custodial staff and other administrators, who have to clean up unnecessary messes constantly, but also to our assistant principal, Karla Stanley, who has to respond to these issues of poor bathroom cleanliness. Stanley, who has been a part of the school staff for many years, talked about some of the worst cases she has seen with the bathrooms in her time here. Kids flushing undergarments down the toilet, which made the drains clog and fluid come up out of the floor drain; putting bananas in the toilets, causing them to clog and the bathroom to have to be closed for maintenance; and girls not placing their used hygiene products where they should be, leave the bathrooms looking unclean and not having a good smell. She stressed that although it’s a recurring issue and makes the custodians’ days hard, there is no way we can cut down on the issue since cameras can’t be placed in or around bathrooms and there isn’t enough staff to have a ‘bathroom monitor.’

“There’s always very inappropriate drawings all around the bathrooms; I don’t understand why kids think it is an okay thing to do,” said senior Oscar Mendoza. “It’s just really immature, but I’m sure they don’t do it at home.”

As we enter this new semester, remember all the hard work our staff puts in daily for us. Remember that we’re in high school, and maybe it’s time for those acts to be put behind us because we wouldn’t want to clean up everything they are required to.