Poor quality of bathrooms requires immediate attention

Krystyna Keena, News Editor

April 17, 2012

Privacy is a highly-valued right to many Americans, but from a glance through the public bathrooms of LZHS, the opposite would appear to be true. District 95’s immediate budget plans should include improvements to the high school restrooms to provide students with the privacy and functionality they need to comfortably use the school’s facilities.

The high school’s public restrooms contain several problems that contribute to an uncomfortable, if not embarrassing, bathroom experience. One major problem within the restrooms is the sheer number of stall doors that refuse to close properly.

On an average day, 17 percent of all bathroom stalls in the high school have stall doors that do not lock or are difficult to close, according to a Bear Facts bathroom study taken on March16. Many of these stalls also have large gaps between the stall door and wall, creating a space through which the occupant of the stall is all too visible.

These gaps become even more problematic when students need to use the stalls to change for after school sports or events. Summer Hughes, sophomore, said she and some other cheerleaders had to find ways to cover those gaps to protect their privacy.

“We took duct tape and put [it] in between the gaps, but it only works so much, [just] to the point where someone couldn’t see us,” Hughes said.

Besides the stall doors, many stalls themselves are small in size and leave little room to move within the space. The smallest stalls in the building are only 74 centimeters, or roughly 29 inches, wide, according to the same Bear Facts study.

In addition, many of the automatic sinks in the bathrooms do not function properly. Of the total number of faucets in the school, 26 percent of all the public restroom sinks in the school either do not turn on or spray the user once on, according to a Bear Facts study.

With the many problems within the high school restrooms, administration said they are aware the bathrooms are in poor quality, and that there is a plan within the District budget to address some of these problems.

“I could tell you that, in seeing the five year [district facilities budget] plan, the bathrooms are a high priority because we know the poor condition that they’re in and that in many cases there’s a lack of privacy,” Ryan Rubenstein, assistant principal of activities and facilities, said.

However, while the bathrooms are in the budget, the current plan would not potentially address the problems until the following summer of 2013, according to Rubenstein. This leaves another year, at the very least, of students dealing with the privacy issues of the school restrooms.

A few of the bathrooms throughout the school have undergone more recent renovation, such as the restrooms by the Performing Arts Center, in the S hallway, and those near the Field House. As a result, many students travel across the school in order to use a higher quality bathroom.

“I don’t even bother going in any restroom other than the ones by the PAC or the science hall,” David LaVanne, senior, said. “I don’t like having to worry about somebody sneaking a peek of me while I’m emptying my bowels, [and the] sinks don’t have enough water pressure, it makes it very difficult to wash your hands.”

While these bathrooms are much newer and nicer, they are only three out of the 10 public restrooms in the school, leaving a large majority in much worse condition.

Privacy issues such as these have no place in a high school setting. Restrooms should provide occupants – especially when those occupants are young students – with adequate privacy and functionality, and when they so clearly fail to do so, administration should make the privacy of their students the first priority in the school’s budget.