The boy’s bathrooms are always nasty and it’s not the custodians’ fault! 

At Roosevelt there is a population of 921 students, according to the information on ASPEN, and about 450 of them are male students. In a population of 450 male students there are six male bathrooms, each of which has two urinals and two stalls. Some stalls are out of order due to the students clogging the toilets with the provided tissue paper. This makes it hard for the janitors to clean and fix the toilets. 

The toilet clogging by the students is a recurring problem; students think it’s “funny” when other students can’t use the bathroom. Sometimes students also purposely urinate on the side of the urinals and sometimes on the floor, causing the bathrooms to smell and making it unsanitary for all. This is not only disgusting it is also unsafe since the built-up urine and other substances thrown on the floor can cause the growth of bacteria and start the spread of harmful viruses.  

There is also the issue of smoking in school restrooms, which poses a serious fire risk. In Maym there was actually a fire in the third-floor boys’ bathroom. Ashes are also frequently left in the toilet and on the floor, which makes the toilets much dirtier and smell even worse. This also generally makes students less active in school and feeds into the addiction of smoking. Though there are efforts to stop these behaviors, students constantly find new ways to sneak these things into the building and unless the school goes to extreme measures to stop it, it’ll be never ending 

But how does this affect the staff? Custodians did not want to be quoted by name, but they complain about how the students show no respect towards the work they must put in to clean these messes. They also all say how it’s “filthy” and “disgusting” and how it is a constant struggle because “students seem to get a kick out of peeing everywhere.” The custodians have it the hardest, as every day there seems to be some new mess in the boy’s bathroom. 

Currently there is no incentive for students to keep the bathrooms clean, which may explain why students fail to show respect. A group of anonymous students around the school are proposing a plan to start a competition between floors for the cleanest bathrooms. It would based on a weekly checkup, that would give the bathrooms a score of 1, 2, or 3. The grade with the highest score by the end of week wins. The winning grade would receive some sort of award like snacks or gift cards. This newly added incentive would give the students at least one reason to keep their restrooms clean.