Bathrooms are being closed by the administrators due to misconduct, but this decision has caused unforeseen consequences for students and teachers alike.
Every student has a unique way that they get around school, and that makes having all the bathrooms open very important. If a student needs to use the bathroom during passing period, then they should have one easily available to them on the path they take to get to class. If you start closing bathrooms and keep switching which bathrooms are closed and which ones are open, then it disturbs students’ daily routines.
When bathrooms get closed, it crowds up the bathrooms that are still open. When students are made to share one bathroom per wing, you have to wait for stalls to open and have to wait in line behind the people who were waiting first. During class it’s not as hectic, but then students are forced to use valuable class time to use the restroom when they should be able to take care of their business between classes. This also negatively affects teachers because their students now have to spend more time getting to the bathroom instead of learning and working in class. The process of getting to a bathroom during class even takes longer now because depending on where a student’s class is, it could take an unnecessary amount of time to get to a bathroom because the one right next to their class is closed.
Some might say that the solution to this problem is to more strictly monitor the bathrooms, but this can be more problematic. The bathroom is the one place at school where a student can be completely alone and that’s more important than a lot of people think.
Being able to have just a couple minutes of alone time gives students a chance to destress and clear their minds. It’s hard to retain information when you’re focusing on your personal life, so students being able to go to the bathroom for a few minutes and sort through their feelings is crucial to their academic success and we shouldn’t take that away from them.
Overall, bathrooms are a key part of students lives and should be protected, not closed. When they get closed it causes students excess stress and in turn negatively impacts their academic achievement. Every school strives for their students to achieve academic success, so why are we impeding that success with closed bathrooms? Administration should open the bathrooms back up because them being closed is causing more bad than good.
