Exploding toilets, broken stalls, flooded hallways, and sinks that don’t work are all common characteristics of our bathrooms here at Bowie. It is not unusual for our bathrooms to be closed or have most of the soap dispensers gone. As a senior, throughout my almost 4 years at Bowie I have never seen the bathrooms in a good state, and that needs to change.
Every bathroom in the academic building needs to be completely remodeled and fixed. Having dysfunctional and disgusting bathrooms promotes a negative environment and students should not have to avoid the bathrooms all day just because of the state of them.
Not only is having toilets that burst more often than they should inconvenient, but it is also extremely unsanitary. For example, just the other day in A hall when a toilet exploded, the entire bathroom flooded along with some of the hallway. Who knows what type of liquid was all over the floors but I think we can all agree that it was germ-infested and gross. This creates a dangerous environment for those who walk through A hall, which is the majority of the school.
Most of our bathrooms being borderline unusable cause many students to skip using the bathroom entirely. This is problematic because students may purposely drink or eat less just so they don’t have to find a bathroom that might be alright for use. Additionally, students who avoid the bathrooms may be subject to UTIs, which could lead to serious outcomes.
With half the stalls missing a lock, having a broken door, or not having a working toilet, that leaves Bowie students with few places to actually go to the bathroom. Additionally, our passing periods are only six minutes, leaving minimal time to go to the bathroom. This creates long lines and makes many people late to class. Fixing a lock or a door are very easy things to do, yet they have been broken all year.
Some may argue that remodeling the restrooms will take too much time and will cause them to be closed for a prolonged amount of time. This questionable thinking is exactly what led the bathrooms to be in the state that it is now. The more the revamping of the bathrooms is pushed off, the worse the condition of them will grow.
While just seeing the constant degradation of the bathrooms should be enough, nothing continues to be done about it. We need to use our voices to express that this is not okay and we want a change. This can be done by creating petitions or contacting the administrators about the horrible state of the bathrooms.
The Bowie bathrooms need to be changed before we start seeing the serious consequences from it. Having functional bathrooms is the bare minimum, and we need to make sure we have that before adding anything else to Bowie. We deserve decent bathrooms that are not closed every other week due to another preventable accident.
