The Current State of the FOHI Bathrooms

Christopher Vasquez and Andrew Mora, Staff Writers

FOHI has a restroom problem, and it has been ongoing for months on end. They never seem to be open. Restrooms like the Boy's restroom in R and G buildings have seldom been open all school year. Although R Restroom has been open a few times, there always seems to be a smoky haze coupled with an odor in the building when the restroom is open.

What Do FOHI Student’s Think?

We interviewed an anonymous female student on her thoughts regarding the situation.

What are your general thoughts of the situation?

“People need to stop hanging out in there”

What are your thoughts on overall cleanliness as well as their availability?

“They are dirty. A majority of the time they’re closed because they’re broken. It sucks [that they are always closed]. There’s only like two open and there’s long lines.”
What do you think the school can do better about the restrooms?

“Have more bathrooms open”

So, Who’s to Blame?

Although there are many issues with the school restrooms on a seemingly never-ending basis, the root cause, contrary to what most students think, is not the custodians that work on maintaining and clean the restrooms to the best of their ability, but instead the students themselves. In fact, it’s the custodians and security guards who must constantly deal with students and their reckless behavior inside the restrooms. These reckless activities include purposefully dirtying, breaking, property within the restrooms or loitering in the restrooms to avoid class.

As a student myself at FOHI I can attest to this and have not in my 3 years of attending this school went in the restroom a single time without seeing broken soap dispensers, tagging on the walls, the urinals and toilets that are treated like trash cans ,and students only looking to cause trouble instead of going restroom like they were intended for.

Often because we are students who may not see all the ins and outs of what goes on in the restrooms we easily find ourselves blaming custodians for “not cleaning the restrooms enough,” but truly if there’s any group of people we have to thank it should be FOHI’s hardworking custodians who work day after day to ensure our students reckless behaviors in the restroom are picked up every time these incidents such as clogged toilets, messy walls, and flooded sinks.

How Do We Fix It?

With bathrooms being constantly under maintenance whether it’s because the toilets are flooded or sinks are broken, there are precautionary measures both faculty members and mainly students can take into consideration. It’s important to note that school security guards already have access to the school-wide student tracking app 5-Star and can accurately monitor who’s supposed to be in the restroom and who’s there to cause trouble but passing period is where a lot of the damage happens. Maybe there should be reasonable punishments made for students who are there for any purpose besides using the restroom. However, school security often has its hands tied up with other campus-wide issues so, what are some things we as students can consider helping maintain the restrooms?

Speaking up is one of the most vital factors that can improve the conditions of the restrooms quite rapidly. Students often never do this because they find themselves too shy and unable to muster enough courage to tell their fellow peers that what they’re doing inside the school bathroom, whether it’s clogging the toilets or tagging their Instagram username on the walls, is not the best idea.

So, it goes without saying that, yes, FOHI’s restrooms require more care than most because of our students’ behaviors, but they can be fixed. It just requires some extra care from the students themselves and consideration for the custodians who already put so much time and effort into making sure we have a clean and working set of school bathrooms.