Salida High School has an ongoing problem: Bathroom Vandalism. The vandalism in our schools bathrooms is unfortunately not improving. There have been more accounts of property damage just in the small amount of time since our last issue. The students’ biggest concern is the common area boys bathroom becoming permanently closed.
In our first article we mentioned that there had been thousands of dollars spent in repairs for the bathroom damages. This semester, on the first day that we got back from our break; a student broke a sink by attempting to rip off the spout, leading to seven hundred dollars just to repair the one sink that was destroyed. This act of vandalism drove our Dean of Students, Abigail Cooksey, to permanently close the boys bathroom. The other two boys bathrooms are still open to use of male students, but since these are smaller, hold less people, and are closer to teacher supervision they don’t have any large scale destruction.
Cooksey declares that since students are using the boys commons bathroom incorrectly, “It probably won’t be open this school year.”
The members of our staff still haven’t caught anyone who is believed to have done any destruction to our bathrooms, but since the commons area bathroom has been closed, the destruction in other two bathrooms has not increased. In the girls bathrooms, there has been no intentional destruction since our last article. Which leads to one of our main recurring themes is congregation. Students still hangout in the bathrooms and our staff is still trying to decrease that. Congregation is our biggest concern for the girls bathroom at this time, but Cooksey says her number one goal is for students to act like highschoolers and use the bathrooms appropriately.
We believe that our janitor’s overall frustration level is lower when there isn’t something big happening everyday. Also they really appreciate when things are reported to the main office as soon as they are found out about.
Cooksey states, “So if something breaks or if you spill something, come to the front office to let us know.”
That is what is mostly happening right now and it is a really important part to keeping our bathrooms a safe and comfortable place for students to use.
