Bathrooms temporarily closed “for your safety”
See also: Please Stop Smoking in the Bathrooms, Tristan Scott, May 2023
Students may have noticed a new phenomenon this year of some Shorecrest bathrooms being blocked off for several days at a time. The signs simply read, “For your safety, bathroom closed due to misuse.”
So what’s the deal?
“When a bathroom is closed, it’s primarily because there was misuse or vandalism,” Principal Towe says. “It truly is just about student safety, and also making certain that we’re providing a clean and safe environment for students to use.”
If staff members notice that a bathroom smells like someone might have been vaping there, “we would want to close that bathroom until the air has a chance to circulate, so that we can be certain that no students go into a space that is unsafe,” he says. Additionally, it’s important for them to clean up vandalism and repair damage so that no students see graffiti that could potentially be hurtful, or could otherwise make them feel like they’re in an unsafe environment.
He notes that not only is using vape pens harmful to young people, whose bodies are still growing, students might also not know where their vape cartridge comes from, posing a risk to their safety. With the use of fentanyl on the rise in our community, he says, this is particularly concerning. “And so we’re cautious of what’s happening in the restrooms when we have the smell because we don’t know what it is,” he says.
Students have mixed reactions to the bathrooms being closed. One senior, who asked to be anonymous, says, “I understand that they’re trying to stop vaping—because it’s something that’s not studied, so we don’t know the long-term health effects—but it’s really irritating as an outsider because I need to pee.”
“It’s just stupid,” says Piper co-editor-in-chief Harlan Liu. When asked to elaborate, they clarified that it’s not the closing of the bathrooms that’s stupid, but the fact that students continue to vandalize and vape in the bathrooms.
No one we talked to had any brilliant ideas for how the administration could better juggle keeping students safe and allowing students to access bathrooms, but it is clear that one obvious solution would be for students to be more considerate of their peers and choose not to vandalize or smoke in bathrooms.
Although it may feel uncomfortable, reporting to a teacher if you see someone being unsafe in the bathroom is another way students can help. “We need students to help us to make certain that everybody’s looking out for each other,” Principal Towe says. “If they see a student smoking in the bathroom, it’s important that they let an adult know so we can make certain that that student is safe.”
While bathrooms being outright closed is one of the most visible problems, Shorecrest students who are just trying to use the bathroom face several other issues.
