I left class to go to the bathroom like normal on my first day of senior year. As I turned the corner in the English hallway, I saw something new: a desk at the entrance to get to the Haben bathroom. Benilde-St. Margaret’s has decided to close the bathroom during the school day and sometimes even after school. This is heartbreaking not only to myself but also to other students alike.
One issue with closing this bathroom is having to go to the dreaded main bathroom. If you walk into the girl’s restroom, you are soon greeted with a stench that makes you want to turn right back around and walk out. It could be eight in the morning, and it would still smell horrid. Along with the smell, the stalls are often left untidy, with unknown substances on the walls along with toilet paper all over the floor. This is not the administration’s fault, but the people who are not creating a mess used to escape to the Haben bathroom to avoid these horrors.
Trying to wash your hands at the sink of the girl’s restroom is a nightmare. The area is usually soaking wet, and the pass you brought is drenched. The soap dispenser is often out of soap, leaving students with only a quick rinse to get the germs off their hands, which is ineffective. After washing your hands, you try to dry them with paper towels; the dispenser is almost always out, so air drying is usually the solution. When throwing away the paper towels, there is almost always a tower of built-up wet towels about two feet tall.
The closure of the Haben bathroom is inconvenient not only for the girls but also for the boys. The girl’s main bathroom is located more centrally to the school, which allows easy access to all areas of BSM. This, however, is not the case for many of the boys. While in the freshmen or English hallways located on the other side of the school from the boy’s bathroom, it creates quite a walk to use the restroom while in class. This year’s rule of only having five minutes makes a trip to the bathroom difficult. Attempting to regulate bodily functions is a bit ridiculous, especially in high school.
Because the bathroom is closed both during and after school, what is the point of having a bathroom there if we can’t use it? Students who participate in sports at BSM aren’t able to use it to change before practice or use the restroom during practice. This only makes it harder for the student-athletes of the school, and I feel that the restriction is useless.
I don’t understand the point of closing the Haben bathroom both before and after school. It makes the lives of students who are just trying to use the restroom harder. Along with that, it creates more work for teachers, especially the ones who have to stand and proctor the door at all times of the day. There have been no major issues with the usage of the Haben bathroom in the past three years that I have gone to BSM, so I don’t understand the need for change this year.