Bathrooms in the middle of second block on a Tuesday.
Churchland High School does not want students to use the bathrooms at all.
The school has consistently locked the bathrooms for elongated periods of time preventing students from using the bathroom when they need to. It’s important for the bathrooms to be open and available especially in the event of emergencies.
You could say that it's the best thing to do to prevent kids in school from smoking, drinking, or fighting while they’re in there. There are also worries of students using the bathrooms to skip or mess around instead of going to class.
However, the actions of few shouldn’t affect the many. Just because a few kids decide to do the wrong thing doesn’t mean that everyone else should be punished. It is unfair to those who choose to do the right thing.
The bathrooms are also closed too frequently, on average at least two to three times per week here at Churchland. Usually between the second and third block of the day the bathrooms are closed because students are supposed to be able to go during lunch but, it feels unfair to those kids who have to go during class when they aren’t in lunch yet or they missed the chance in lunch.
The other problem why this is supremely unfair is because of the amount of time that the bathrooms are locked. It sometimes takes the entire school day for the main bathrooms to be opened and it is a rarity for the other facilities to be available and opened. If kids smoking marijuana is as big of an issue the school says it is and that's the reason the bathrooms are consistently unavailable, then there should at least be a better alternative than shutting the bathrooms all day. It takes around three to five hours to get the smell of marijuana out of a room so in theory the bathrooms should be safe to go in third block which would be the ideal time for the bathrooms to be open since the average high schooler at Churchland is using the bathroom during third and fourth Block.
There has to be something done about this. It started as a nice safety precaution but it quickly turned into a very bad thing that is causing a lot more problems than solutions.
Photos: Tristan Moore