“So Fresh, So Clean,” a song written by Outkast, definitely wouldn’t describe the bathrooms at WJ. Building service workers at schools are burdened with the unfortunate task of cleaning up after thousands of students every day. Students are notorious for complaining that these workers are incompetent and are not doing their job. It would be safe to assume that the workers think otherwise. Who is really at fault for the disgusting bathrooms at our school?
Being teenagers, we are not known for our cleanliness or organizational skills, as evidenced by the absurd problems encountered in the bathrooms on a daily basis. Walking into the bathroom, one can expect to find a toilet overflowing, sinks still running, drains clogged with toilet paper, causing even further flooding and of course, toilets that have not been flushed. But it’s okay because someone from building services will clean this up, right? I think not.
After feeling frustrated for months, my final straw with the bathrooms and lack of responsibility exercised by its users occurred on the day of the Black Student Union (BSU) assembly in February. While taking a break from rehearsal before our first performance, I went to the bathroom. Navigating through a bathroom littered with trash and gum on the floor, I stepped on a piece of toilet paper that easily stuck to the bottom of my shoe. Luckily, I noticed the toilet paper dragging behind me before I made my way on stage and began to recite a selection of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
My almost super-embarrassing blunder is not uncommon to other WJ students. Dirty bathrooms, bathrooms that are purposely vandalized and trashed by amateur pranksters, make the relatively simple task of going to the bathroom unnecessarily difficult for girls and boys alike. Females, having to sit down when using the bathroom and typically having a better sense of hygiene, encounter the same problems as males with their peers not picking up after themselves and generally treating school bathrooms like pigsties.
Any student who participates in an after school activity often witnesses the tireless work of building services throughout the school week. They arrive here earlier than all students and are the last people to leave, working tirelessly and thanklessly to clean up after us. To say that these people do not work hard to provide us with clean bathrooms, a luxury nonetheless, is nothing short of ungrateful.
When using facilities at school, students should remember the age-old question asked by their kindergarten teachers: Is this how you act at home? Don’t try to tell me that you draw on the walls of your bathrooms at home, clog the drains with toilet paper to flood the room and fail to flush the toilet. If you do, I feel sorry for you and your parents. It’s time for students to take responsibility for their actions at school and keep the bathrooms at our newly remodeled school clean and sanitary. Until students take this responsibility, I’ll be taking care of my business at home.
