We all know that feeling, when mother nature rings her bell, signaling us to move to the nearest restroom. High School students, like all humans, are very familiar with this feeling and they often use the school’s restroom facilities. Unfortunately the poor quality of these bathrooms make students question if holding it in might just be better.

“There’s either no toilet paper or all the toilet paper is in the toilet or maybe they’re out of soap or out of paper towels or something. There are multiple bathrooms, at least men’s bathrooms, in the school that are either lacking doors on the stalls or don’t have locks on them, which I think is a little dumb especially when teachers are going ‘Oh why did you go to the bathroom at the front of the school when there’s a bathroom right there?’” says Senior Ian Graham regarding the presentation of the bathrooms. “They suck. i’ll walk in sometimes and the toilet paper dispensers are everywhere on the floor and there’s toilet paper rolls everywhere. Its really gross and disgusting and I hate it.” says another student, sophomore, McKenna Murphy.

These  sometimes graphic descriptions fill the school and its hallways. Students unite over their terrible experiences regarding the bathroom and often rant together about their concerns with the conditions. It clearly is a problem, but who is to blame? Most students can agree that they are the ones causing this problem and that the janitors are doing their best to clean up the messes we make. Maybe if students put a little more effort into keeping their bathrooms clean we wouldn’t have these problems. “it’s the students fault, are you kidding me? The janitor’s job is to clean up after the students and the mess that they make. They always do. If I go into the bathroom one day and it’s just completely disgusting, I can come back, usually the next day, and it will be clean again. It’s just the students that keep messing it up. It’s definitely not the janitors fault that the doors are lacking locks or something, that’s just students that don’t care about the school” says, once again, Ian Graham. Because of the wreck on the bathrooms, janitors are having to put trash bags on toilets that are out of service, out of fear that just a sign may not work.

Some students are even taking the approach of sharing their horror stories and turning them into humor. When asked about the condition of the bathrooms, Senior Pierce Kaufman decided to take the comedic route by quoting comedian Rob Riggle; “When Rob Riggle explained the men’s public bathroom, he explained it as, ‘There’s an invisible wall or stench where the door should be, and when you pass the threshold you immediately enter enemy territory. Much like cattle to the slaughter men line up at the urinals one by one approaching, step by step, eventually trying to reach their destination. When they do finally reach it, observing the urine stained terrible absolutely atrocious thing that they call plumbing in front of them, they somehow have to, in the middle of it all that awkwardness, unveil themselves and do their business. It’s impossible.” Another funny senior, Julia Weingarden said, “I think the bathrooms are very much similar to the Syrian crisis: it’s disgusting and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better.”

Spectrum decided to poll 100 students on their opinion of the bathrooms. Shockingly, 14 people agreed that the bathrooms were in okay condition but could use some work. 1 person thought that the bathrooms are perfectly normal and need no improvements. And 85 people agree that the bathrooms are filthy, disgusting, and need to be better maintained.

As demonstrated by the poll, not all students think the bathrooms are disgusting. One of the 15 students who did not agree with the common description for the restroom, freshman Stephanie Garcia, said, “The bathrooms are not as bad as everyone makes them seem. They’re actually really clean considering that we’re messy people. I honestly think that they’re in good conditions, some work can be done but it’s very minimal.”
Since most students agreed that they were the root of the problem, it’s up to them to make a change. All humans know what good hygiene looks like and it’s not that hard to clean up after yourself. Together they can make the bathrooms clean again, with a little bit of teamwork and cleanliness.