Recently, schools across the country have been forced to implement stricter bathroom rules. Along with the usual spew of problems such as vaping and fighting that occur in public school bathrooms, many schools have seen a shocking rise in the destruction of property in the bathrooms. At Zachary High, online trends and pranks have led to the destruction of campus bathrooms.
Students have been using the bathrooms as a source of entertainment for the past few years. A couple of years ago, a trend called “Devious Licks” became incredibly popular on TikTok. The trend captured students stealing toilets, sinks, and soap dispensers. Some members of the student body at ZHS took to video these “Licks” for online attention, which contributed to the degradation of our school bathrooms. Principal Lindsey Spence described the intense vandalism that students inflicted on ZHS.
“They were pulling the paper towel dispensers off the walls, they were pulling the toilet paper dispensers off the walls, they were throwing things in the toilets,” Principal Spence said on the issue.
Additionally, this year has seen some of the worst instances of students stuffing paper towel rolls down the toilet, clogging the toilets and making the bathrooms unusable. Though this has been a problem in the past, it has never been this bad. For the past few months, the bathrooms have been in a near constant state of disarray, sometimes even having to be closed to unclog the toilets.
Procedures have been implemented at other schools across the country to combat these problems. According to KTLA 5, a high school in Orange County requires students to scan a QR code before they leave class to go to the bathroom and when they come back. This ensures that the school knows who went to the bathroom and for how long. If something occurs in the bathroom, the school can track down the students involved. Other schools have limited bathroom access to transition time only, reducing the number of students missing class to use the bathroom.
Zachary High has yet to implement extreme bathroom procedures such as these, but if students continue to destroy campus property, administration may be forced to take more drastic measures. Principal Spence never imagined that such rules would need to be put in place, but recent experiences have left her shocked and disappointed.
“I used to not think [rules] had to be so strict because [the bathroom] is just a place everybody needs to go, but, in the last few years, we’ve had to put stricter rules in place,” Principal Spence said.
Right now, the poor etiquette and behavior of a few students is destroying a space meant for everyone to share. This poor behavior must be put to an end, so that students can regain access to the basic human right of going to the restroom.
