I’m sure most of you are aware that recently, all but one boys’ bathroom has been locked during the school day. It can be annoying for boys when they find the closest bathroom to their class is “out of order”, so they go to the next closest one. “Out of order.” This process is repeated until they finally find an open bathroom, except they’re told they have to wait to use it for the kids in there to finish up. At this point, what should have been a 5-minute bathroom break, has turned into a 20-minute ordeal in which a student is taken out of instructional time. 

I, as well as many other boys at East Hampton High School, are curious as to the reason why the bathrooms are all closed. The word on the street is that it’s in fact because kids are loitering and damaging the bathrooms around the school. To this, I believe that the administration is confining us to use one bathroom so that the one bathroom used will not be trashed. As someone brought up to me, the rationale here is that if there are 6 bathrooms open, a student would have no problem with trashing one. If that bathroom closes, they’ll use another one. However, if there is only one bathroom, a student will think twice and decide not to trash the only remaining bathroom. 

While I can understand this line of reasoning, and I believe that consequences should be given for vandalizing bathrooms, it doesn’t make sense that everyone should be punished for the actions of a few.  I also want to tell anyone who has trashed bathrooms in the past to stop doing this, so we can all have the right to free bathroom access returned to us. As long as we keep acting like animals, the school will treat us as such. So, let us keep our bathrooms clean, and they will keep them open.