The Roxbury High bathrooms are a big topic of conversation among students, with many feeling they are poorly kept. They are frequently used, and the question is, is it the students’ fault or the schools’? The bathrooms are vandalized and trashed in between lunch periods, and there’s random food strewn about. Kai Adams, a freshman said, ¨I walked into [the] H hall bathroom to people having a food fight and food everywhere.“
As a solution, the school attempted to close the bathroom for the last five minutes and the first five minutes of each period to prevent fights or hallway wandering. Although the school does this, the bathrooms are still in disrepair. Using SmartPass or having hall monitors hasn’t really helped alleviate the number of students in the halls or in the bathrooms, or the messes that are made there.
Many students have either vandalized the bathrooms or just destroyed them. The girls’ bathroom has non-working sinks, leaky pipes, and vandalism, and the case is the same in the boys’ bathroom. Brooke Rita Santos, a freshman, said she experienced similar things. ¨ I saw people straightening hair, plus I really hate the fact there is no floor-length mirrors in the bathroom.”
Although the bathrooms aren’t amazing, they replaced the soap dispensers to automatic ones, and these small improvements have made many students happy. Many would love to see this trend continue, with better paper towel dispensers or automatic sinks. And even though the soap dispenser are new, additional improvements may not be in the budget right now so it’s very unlikely that we will see anything for a while. However, some students hope to see some minor changes soon. Brooke Rita Santos says again, “The Tampon and pad dispenser is broken, and these necessities should be free.” This is just one minor change that could make a big difference for students.
Some suggest that we should just redo the entire bathrooms; the vandalism is bad, parts of the tile are cracking, there’s a hole in the wall in the girls’ bathroom, there are leaky sinks, and they are a pain with the handles, the paper towel dispenser, etc. But we have to remember it’s not just on the staff or the administration to fix it. Kai Adams says, “ I walk into any stall, and I see so much graffiti.”
We have to remember to do our part in keeping the bathrooms clean, as we are part of the problem. We litter, we vandalise, and it has been a problem for a long time. It is the students who vandalise or throw things about and keep it dirty; meanwhile, the janitors are trying to keep up with what the students do. It is their job to sanitize the bathroom, not clean up after 14-18-year-olds who can’t keep it clean.
