One of Salida High School’s largest problems right now is bathroom vandalism. There have been multiple accounts of vandalism in the school bathrooms over the years, but there’s been an uptick in recent months. Vandalism is not acceptable in school, and the SHS staff members have been tirelessly working to prevent it because not only does it make our school look bad, it also costs the school a great sum of money in repairs.
Recently, there have been broken toilets, urinals, sinks, doors; expensive plumbing issues; and graffiti on the bathroom walls. One student claimed that the vandalism has been going on all year but has recently gotten worse.
Principal Jesse Hull stated that “the repairs have cost the school thousands of dollars in plumbing and fixtures.”
Students have flushed paraphernalia down the toilets and also tend to stand on toilets in order for it to appear like there is only one person in the stall when they are skipping class to hide out in a place without administration or cameras. This results in the toilets eventually falling off of the walls and damaging the plumbing systems. Due to these events, administration has had to enforce more bathroom restrictions on the students.
Dean of Students Abigail Cooksey says that it is difficult to know what’s going on inside of the bathrooms because, as it should be, there are no cameras inside. There are cameras right outside of the bathrooms though, so they can see who goes in and out of the bathroom and maybe get clues as to who is doing the damage. For example, the administration has caught a few acts of vandalism in the smaller downstairs bathroom. There have been instances of students throwing paper towels away and not hitting the trash can and leaving trash all over the floor, and the camera can see that part because it is outside of the bathroom. This has allowed the staff to address some students for some basic issues like not cleaning up after themselves, however, there are bigger problems.
“As far as the large-scale vandalism that we’ve seen, where people have broken sinks or toilets or stolen soap dispensers, it’s really hard to know who actually steals it. We know it. We know that people know [who does these things], but no one wants to fess up about it, which means we just have to be stricter across the board,” Cooksey states.
The restrictions are not only affecting all the students, but they are also affecting the Salida High School staff. The restrictions require that staff members must sit outside of the common bathrooms to monitor who goes in and out of the bathrooms to prevent more vandalism.
“I have more to do in my day than just physically sit inside of the bathrooms all day,” Cooksey said.
She has said that it can be frustrating to have to sit and watch cameras and make notes about which students were in the bathroom between certain times. Then she has to call them all out of class to have a conversation with them to find out if this part of the bathroom was broken when they went in; it’s like engaging in CIA level detective work for a silly problem that shouldn’t be happening at all. It is also disappointing to see students being disrespectful of our custodians time.
Cooksey went on to explain that she loves her job and she loves the students at Salida High School, and she spends a lot of time vouching for students because she believes that they are great people who have big futures and are capable of great things. The staff have been working really hard to bring awareness to this issue and it has definitely paid off.
Though bathroom vandalism is still an issue, staff members are working really hard to minimize it. Cooksey has made a huge impact on the culture of our school through the implementation of the “bathroom vandalism” monitoring initiative that she and the staff members recently started to engage with. The message that she wanted to send to all of the vandalizers is that she wants people to feel comfortable using our school bathrooms in a clean environment. Cooksey and the teachers have really influenced people to keep our school clean and in tip-top shape by taking their precious time to make sure that students aren’t causing problems in the bathrooms and get to class on time. SHS gives a big thanks to Cooksey and the other staff members for putting in the effort to keep our school a place that we can be proud of.
