The bathrooms at Lightridge are one of the biggest problems in the school. They are often extremely dirty, filthy, and look war-torn. This problem can’t be ignored any longer, as the bathrooms have reached a point where it’s becoming a health hazard. The problems with the bathrooms are complex, there are so many factors that contribute to the often unsanitary nature of them. The main problem, however, is definitely the student body.

Student actions are probably the first factor that comes to mind when talking about the problem with the bathrooms, and for a reason. Whether it’s breaking sinks and dispensers, plugging sinks with paper towels, or scribbling on the sides of bathroom stalls, other students misbehaving causes a significant amount of the unfavorable bathrooms. Almost every time you step into a bathroom, you can see decrepit stalls, vandalized and destroyed by students during the school day. And despite the custodial staff and administrators best efforts, there will always be students trashing and defacing bathrooms.

Another main contributor to the unsanitary conditions of our bathrooms is the general poor hygiene of our students. Many students, despite being in high school, do not even wash their hands after using the restroom. This can cause many problems in the restroom which can eventually lead to the bathrooms becoming unclean. To fix this issue students should develop better habits not only in the bathrooms but generally they should practice better hygiene. Ways to do this include washing their hands thoroughly with soap and water every time they use the bathroom and using the bathroom facilities properly.

There are a lot of ways that these actions and misdemeanors can be prevented, and while you would think that it is common sense to maintain a bathroom, clearly, it’s not as evident. We can ensure that we all play our parts by encouraging our peers to keep the bathrooms orderly, and report any misbehavior that we witness. Firstly, we can team up with the custodians to do this, and limiting access to some of the bathrooms during certain parts of the day when they are known to get the dirtiest. We can also implement repercussions, by enforcing detention and analyzing who messes the areas so much. Bathrooms can also be limited to one person at a time, to ensure they remain clean or at least orderly. All in all, the state of our bathrooms is dire, and we must make an effort to restore and maintain them. We all contribute to the cleanliness of not only our bathrooms, but our school. We should treat them as we treat our own spaces at home and how we would ideally like them to be like. Together, we can make the bathrooms more hygienic, cleanly, and in totality safer and nicer facilities to use.