Bathrooms are a place where a decent amount of privacy is a necessity. They should be somewhere where you can be comfortable for the few minutes it takes to ‘do your business.’ They also should be clean and hygienic enough not to repulse you to the point where you don’t want to use them. Unfortunately, privacy and hygiene are not very common in the men’s’ bathrooms here at South.

I’m definitely not bashing the janitors for the bathrooms’ uncleanly state. They shouldn’t have to clean the men’s bathrooms four times a day because people flood the toilets, urinals, and sinks every day. If you’re one of those kids, IT’S TIME TO STOP!!!

Then there’s those kids who pee all over the toilet seats in the stalls. It’s really not that hard to lift up the seat with your foot and pee into the bowl. All you’re accomplishing is giving someone you likely don’t even know a harder time.

“There’s always like used condoms, and pee, and other nasty stuff all over the floors,” said 10th grader Guthrie Paulson. “This one day, somebody spilled like a jug of cheeseballs all over the bathroom floor. So all day they were just like getting smashed all over the floor. People just have no respect for the janitors. They don’t realize that that’s somebody’s job.”

One of the more invigorating bathroom issues is the people who just go in there and hang out. Whether to skip class, vape, have sex, or fight, these people are guaranteed to be in at least one of the school bathrooms at all times.

“[Mens bathrooms] are very awkward. You go in and everyone is yelling and fighting and stuff. Whenever you ‘gotta go’ [and] you go into the bathroom, you automatically decide you don’t have to anymore,” said Paulson.

Bathrooms are uncomfortable enough just as they are. But in men’s bathrooms, when someone is just standing outside your stall or next to your urinal doing nothing, it doesn’t do anything but make things more awkward. This brings me to my next topic: urinals.

Who decided that it was a good idea to have people use the bathrooms four inches away from one another with no separation? Not only are the urinals at South actually disgusting but they put you in literally the most socially awkward situation you could ever find yourself in on a daily basis.

I never really fully realized how much I despise urinals and everything about men’s bathrooms until I came to South and experienced the gender neutral bathroom. It was incredibly eye-opening to have an experience in a bathroom that didn’t make me want to puke or break a mirror. Not only could we upgrade and have all stalls, we could double upgrade and have all gender neutral bathrooms!