Let’s discuss something we’ve all experienced at school: you’re walking towards a bathroom and trying to push it open, and boom! The door is shut, and now you have to find another bathroom just because someone decided to vandalize it. Vandalism is something that affects everyone at our school, mostly impacting the students who want to use them, students who commit vandalism, the janitors who have to clean them, and the school’s security, who now have to track down who committed the vandalism.
While researching more information about the topic, we decided to talk with the main people in charge of taking care of our school. Ben Todd, the dean of our students, answered a few questions that we had about the vandalism.
“Why do students do it in the first place? “It’s hard to pinpoint; everything is different. I think a lot of times places are vandalized because people are trying to get attention.” This was also a major problem that we had during 2021 to 2022 with the devious lick challenge: where teens made TikToks of stealing doors, sanitizer dispensers, and sinks from the bathrooms. We still need to address that, no matter the reason; if it’s more of a TikTok trend or to “impress” your friends, it’s something that shouldn’t be done.
Some of the major things that have been seen this year include incidents of doors being ripped off, food getting flushed down toilets or blasted onto the walls, and graffiti in the girls’ bathrooms.
We had Ms. Weihe, our school’s security officer, inform us about the specific things that are getting damaged in the bathrooms. She explained that what they are finding is, “in the boys’ bathrooms, they are ripping off the bottom part of the sinks; the plastic cover and shoving them down the toilets, they’re plugging them with either the toilet seat covers or toilet paper.”
With those being only a small percentage of what is happening in the bathrooms, both Mr. Todd and Ms. Weihe, as well as other school faculty, have been working to prevent students from destroying the bathrooms. Some of the ways they have been trying to mitigate that are by removing toilet seat covers and placing paper towel dispensers outside of the boys’ bathrooms. Also, punching holes in the wall making a mess of the roof, and ripping off doors isn’t cheap. Ms. Weihe says, “Just one door, 250 bucks.”
Both Mr. Todd and Ms. Weihe informed us that anyone caught vandalizing the bathrooms would have to pay for the repairs, which could be anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars to thousands and most likely will result in suspension.
What are some ways students can report any vandalism they see occurring? Students should report it to the teachers or any staff members. Ms. Weihe added that any identifiers would help because of the cameras located around the school.
On the bright side of things, it seems that the problems have been steadily decreasing from a couple of years back, with Mr. Todd sharing that, “the level of vandalism has dropped quite a bit from last year” and also saying, “I think that with the boys’ bathroom, it’s dropped quite a bit with something simple like putting the paper towel dispensers on the outside of the bathrooms instead of the inside.”
In conclusion, with all the problems that are trying to be addressed, it’s crucial that students do their part by actively reporting any incidents that they see, as well as not letting trends or popularity get in the way of doing the right thing. All of these measures will ensure a safe and respectful environment within the school.
