There’s something really stinky with the toilets, and it’s not the iceberg emerging from the toilet bowl. There are many different issues with our school bathrooms, a good amount of which happened last year and hasn’t been fixed yet.

Bathroom stalls all over the school have doors that either don’t lock or don’t have any locks at all. This leads to students not even being able to safely use the bathroom because no working stall doors are available which also leaves students feeling very vulnerable in what should be a comfortable space.

Because of this, family bathrooms around the school are nearly always occupied due to how much more convenient and functional they are. 

In addition to the stall doors, however, some of the toilets don’t fully flush leading to a fully empty toilet being a rarity, which is just plain gross. Also, when you are able to flush, there is a high chance that it will overflow and go everywhere. 

Paper towel dispensers that don’t work even when they are full with a brand-new roll, but students can barely use the bathrooms anyway so that may not be the greatest priority right now.

There are so many fixable issues with the bathrooms that just continue to go overlooked. 

The same toilets that fully broke last year are still out of order this year. It just seems like nothing is going to be changed any time soon. 

The sinks are often clogged; students take paper towels and leave them in the sink so that the water eventually overflows. All the blame on the nasty bathrooms isn’t just lack of care.

There’s a handful of students who make issues within the bathroom, but the handful leave a bad reputation for everyone else. The one thing that gets fixed quickly is the graffiti. Whenever someone draws something inside a stall, it’s painted over within a week.

In the bathrooms, there are also many non-bathroom activities happening. Common knowledge among H-F students is that there are times when there are people vaping and fighting in the bathrooms.  

If you step into a bathroom, there is a guarantee that there will be some type of trash on the floor—toilet paper, school work, school supplies, etc. 

Simple fixes by the students could make some very big progress. Just simple bathroom hygiene would fix many of the problems that occur daily. 

It comes down to responsibility and respect. This is our school and it’s just embarrassing the state that we leave the bathrooms. 

If we want the conditions to improve, we need to step up our game. If bathroom items continue to be broken, the faculty will have no motivation to fix it for us.

Overall, the broken toilets, broken locks, stalls without doors, paper towel dispensers with no towels, clogged sinks, graffiti and non-bathroom activities are a big problem that all students can see. Whenever visitors to the school use a bathroom, the poor quality of them doesn’t show them how our school is.

One reason why actions haven’t been taken yet is most likely the fact that after they get fixed, the students could just cause the same issues to occur again. Why waste money on something that will be back broken right away?