What’s Going On With the Bathrooms?
It was a Tuesday afternoon, during AT Data Structures, and my stomach was about to explode. I expected a short journey to the bathroom; after all, the ones on the first floor were only half a corridor away from the classroom. So I was flabbergasted to find both toilets utterly unusable, clogged to the very top. So I flew up the stairs to the second-floor bathrooms in search of a usable stall. Do we see where this is going? Yeah, the second-floor bathrooms weren’t usable either. But they were not clogged. Instead, they were all locked. The only sign that someone was in the stalls is a loud and resounding “El Primooooo”! Seems like a bathroom three-stack! So upstairs I went, again—two clogged, one locked. It was not until I reached the furthest bathroom on the fourth floor that one stall, one stall, was usable.
So I find myself asking two questions:
1: Why are that many bathrooms clogged?
And 2: What are the bros doing in the bathroom stalls?
Let’s start with the clogging. And we can’t blame the bathrooms themselves. Speaking as someone who, unfortunately, had to use our school bathrooms regularly, I can confidently say I’ve never clogged a single bathroom! Yes, they are fully functional, thanks to our wonderful janitors (who definitely deserve a pay RAISE for cleaning up those boys’ bathrooms).
So then what—or who—is the culprit? I think the answer is pretty clear. It’s the people. Ultimately, bathrooms clog because something that isn’t supposed to be in the potty gets flushed down. And it isn’t once or twice that I see them stuffed with Dorito bags, inexplicable amounts of toilet paper, and an assignment someone got a B on. When we call bathrooms “bathrooms,” they are meant to be rooms for us humans to take care of sanitary needs. Now, not only do we not do that anymore, but we let all this other stuff take baths in them instead.
Considering that there is literally a trash can two steps next to the stalls, I genuinely cannot understand the motive behind all of this throwing. Maybe they’re running SAS’s first-ever toilet bowl three-point contest. Who knows?
Oh, and the urinals TOO. Guess what? They too are filled with the same thing, including another assignment from the same person. This time, it’s a B+. Seems like an improvement! But the urinal bowls get even more exotic than that. If you are lucky—or not so lucky, I should say—you may also find erasers, shirts, baseball cards, someone’s lunch leftovers, a pile of golden treasure, and a single lost AirPod, all in a place where only one thing should ever go.
But surely not every toilet stall is clogged, right? What’s going on with the other stalls? Good question. They are filled with the bros. And I know as a matter of fact that they definitely aren’t here to poop. No one could convince me that, coincidentally, twelve other high school boys happen to have a stomach issue at exactly 12:37 p.m.
Apparently, there exists a group of people in our school who deem these stalls the perfect place for undisturbed privacy—so much so that other downsides, ranging from the absence of air conditioning to the unthinkable smell coming from nearby clogged toilets, mean nothing to them. On top of that, I do not know when this started, but the boys’ bathroom itself became everyone’s favorite HANGout spot. I do not know how many times I enter a bathroom just to find a bunch of dudes standing there. If you see them, you should probably find another bathroom —after all, I don’t think anyone can pee in peace with their back turned toward ten teenagers staring you down, as if you have invaded their territory—their bathroom.
It is effectively the multifunction room of our school–used for everything from flexing their massive biceps in front of the mirror, lap-dances, imitation-hakas, brawl stars sessions, trash-talking teachers without the risk of being overheard, and practicing their bathrooms speeches to nail it—all while hiding from an assembly. And that’s just a few I’ve personally witnessed–god knows what other stuff the bros are up to!
Thus far I have pretty much just been flaming the SAS bathrooms. But that is not the purpose of this speech. Although it is generally agreed upon that our bathrooms aren’t the best in the world, we refuse to acknowledge that we, the students, are the real culprits behind the bathroom crisis.
And I’m here to make you admit that.