This year, Southern Lehigh High School has encountered a new and frustrating problem: locked bathrooms. Students have been vandalizing the bathrooms, as well as flushing various items down the toilets.

Though this has mostly been an ongoing problem in the boys’ bathrooms, the whole school has felt the effects of repeated vandalism. While walking down the hallway or at the start of classes, we have all heard the adversity students have faced in order to relieve themselves.

Students may feel the short term effects of running to the second-closest restrooms, but the custodial staff in our building has faced a series of extra tasks resulting from this repeated ignorant behavior. When a student decides to flush objects down the toilet that aren’t supposed to be there, someone has to clean it up, and that job usually falls on the custodial staff.

Unfortunately, the perpetrators of these frustrating misdemeanors are ignorant to the burden placed on others as a result of their messes. Custodians have to clean up over flow after overflow, and when the bathroom stalls are vandalised, they’re the ones who buff out the writing on the walls.

Not only do these actions affect the custodians, but they also affect the the school as a whole. Broken toilets are a massive and unnecessary expense for the school, and while they are being fixed, the bathrooms are often put out of commission. This negatively impacts the students that have to walk further from their classroom than normal to use the bathroom, as well as the teachers who have to wait for those students to get back.

While the students miss class time, the custodians are on constant clean up duty, and the school is paying for the whole mess. Those who decided to vandalize or destroy parts of the school bathrooms negatively impact so many people school wide. These ignorant and rude individuals are making a seemingly simple aspect of day to day life much harder than it needs to be, and costing valuable time and money.

These actions have also contributed to less student freedom in the hallways. Now, teachers must strictly enforce passes throughout the day, especially during Spartan periods, which limits students who have to see another teacher for a quick question or help at the last minute.

If you see any suspicious behavior in the bathrooms, please tell a teacher or administrator as soon as possible. Of course, the best way to prevent these incidents is to not commit them in the first place, so if you’re thinking of ruining school property, please reconsider.