Bathroom Standards

          Ok girls and guys, this one’s for you! How many times have you walked into one of the Melrose High School bathroom and been thoroughly disappointed? I  cannot tell you how many times I have walked into a bathroom, sighed, looked in the mirror to fix my hair and walked out without being able to properly use the bathrooms. We are lucky to have bathrooms because there are many places in the world that do not have indoor plumbing, or plumbing at all, but we have all grown accustomed to certain types of bathroom standards and the ones at MHS are not coming close to meeting it.
          Mondays are practically the only day the bathrooms are ever somewhat usable, relatively clean and well-stocked with enough toilet paper and paper towels to last the day.  If you really need to go it’s still a possibility at this point in the week. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are inconsistent; you just never know what you are going to find when you open those doors. However, Thursdays and Fridays are completely hopeless, whether it is a clogged toilet or an empty roll on the ground, you will be disappointed by the sight of these bathrooms. Unless you are extremely lucky or bring a roll from home, don’t bother trying at all.  This is not how a high school student should be living. We should be able to access to a working, fully stocked bathroom AT ALL TIMES.
     At any given moment, only the four toilets in the entire school are ever truly usable for the girls at MHS; that means not clogged, not dirty, and are stocked with toilet paper. In every bathroom, the areas in around the stalls are usually completely destroyed and look like they belong in an abandoned warehouse. And that brings the question who is doing this and why. High school girls should have respect for their fellow classmates and not ruin the only “sanctuary” we have in this school. Why are people ruining it when they know that it is not going to get cleaned or replaced?

     For any one who has not had the experience of using an MHS bathroom, anything more than slipping in for a thirty second bladder release is tortuous. Other than smelling horrendously, they offer little to the female gender; along inoperative stalls, there are no paper towels, no trash barrels and sinks that require a one-hand-at-a-time washing technique.

     Now I personally have never been in the boy’s bathroom, but while talking with fellow “Imprint” writer, Joe Kelly, I have realized that the boy’s bathrooms are not much better. Melrose boys have very little respect for their bathrooms because they have become so disgusting over the years. Although they usually have toilet paper, it is usually clogging the sinks and toilets, not on the roll. Hand dryers are about as usable as the ones in the girls bathroom because they usually only blow cold air that feels more like a slight breeze than the real gust that is necessary for drying off hands. The stalls don’t lock and the toilet seats are unusable, even though no boy would ever dare to us them during school, anyways.
     Students need to realize that destroying our bathrooms is not going to get us new ones. We need to start respecting them and the rest of the school, for no reason other than to show that we do care and want to make our school a better place. If we stop destroying bathrooms and classrooms and halls, maybe they wouldn't be so reluctant to upgrade them. We only have one school, and we are all here for four years, so let’s stop destroying it and start to make it better!

By Elisa Lemack