Bathrooms are important to every school, but many WHBHS students find them unhygienic and problematic. According to a survey from Bradley Corp, 6% of students rate their school bathrooms as “excellent” and 63% worry about coming into contact with germs in the school bathroom.
One problem WHBHS students have is the need for soap and unclean sinks. Junior Brooke Bahr says, “There’s always hair in the sink and there’s typically no soap too. In one of the bathrooms, only two out of the many sinks work.”
Junior Ryan Zollweg adds, “In most bathrooms, there is only one large bowl sink that everyone uses and most of the time there is some sort of garbage in it. There is never any soap in the bathrooms and you always have to use sanitizer afterward.”
Senior Juliana AmayaDelcid says, “The lighting in the bathroom is poor and often there is a plumbing issue, either the sink or toilet is clogged.”
Brooke adds that the girls’ locker room bathroom needs extra attention because it “is not taken care of at all. Soap is constantly empty and one of the two stalls was out of order for over a month.”
Ryan is concerned about the flooding in the boys’ bathroom stalls because of the garbage clogging the toilet. Also, the sinks splash water in your face and the air dryers aren’t clean, according to Juliana.
They have also noticed some student problems, such as using the bathrooms as a hang-out spot. Ryan says, “Boys go in and hang out in them just to avoid going to classes,” and Brooke agrees, saying, “Girls are constantly waiting outside and it seems like sometimes girls aren’t doing anything in the bathroom stall, but will continue to stay there.”
Brooke and Ryan have suggestions on things they would like to see fixed in our school bathrooms. Brooke would like to see fairness in the locker rooms because the girls’ locker room (and cafeteria bathroom) is always locked. “The boy’s bathroom/locker room is always unlocked so it’s simply unfair,” says Brooke. Ryan wants to improve the overall cleanliness of the bathrooms by having multiple sinks, better soap dispensers that are closer to the sinks, and stronger disinfectants. Juliana wishes for paper towels in the bathrooms.
Bradley Corp also says that 50% of students rate their school bathrooms as “poor” or “fair”, however, Brooke and Ryan rate WHBHS’ bathrooms as “fair” on a scale from “poor”,” fair”, to “excellent”, because they are far from the worst they’ve seen. Juliana says it’s “fair” in convenience because of the multiple stalls but “poor” in cleanliness because of the frequent toilet water on the floor.
