Currently, three bathrooms in this school are shut down. Two are because of vandalism, and one is due to maintenance. These bathrooms have been shut down for several months and students are confused as to why they have not been reopened yet.
One bathroom shut down due to vandalism is the boys’ bathroom by room 255 on the second floor, where the sink has been ripped off of the wall. “Based off of our plumbing in the building, it’s just been very hard for the maintenance department in MCPS to acquire a new sink to replace it. They are trying to reinstall the one that we currently have, but it’s been taking some time for them to do that one,” school business administrator Arlin De La Rosa said.
The girl’s bathroom next to the health room on the first floor has a similar situation, with the sink coming off of the wall. Rather than reattaching the same sink to the wall, the school is trying to replace all of the sinks in that bathroom with a trough sink to prevent future vandalism and damage. A trough sink is a large, rectangular basin mounted on the wall incorporating two or more faucets so it can be used by multiple people at the same time. “The plumbing in that bathroom is very different. Each sink has a different set of pipes that bring the water to it. So if we get a trough sink in there, then we can unify the plumbing. It adds to the structure of it, and it makes it really hard to be knocked off the wall,” De La Rosa said.
With the rise of racist events in this school such as a student writing the n-word on a Black student’s desk on Dec. 2, the term vandalism can be seen as having racially charged connotations. However, vandalism in the context of bathrooms refers to damage of the equipment in the bathroom, not graffiti or tagging. “Students are going into the bathrooms and they are damaging either the bathroom stalls, the toilets, the sinks, the mirrors that we have in there, they’re just going in, they’re taking the trash they’re throwing it places, they’re breaking the things and they’re making it unsafe to be used. We can update [the signs] to say another word, but that is what it is: damaging the items,” De La Rosa said.
Students who damage the bathrooms often do so because they find that it’s a fun way to pass time instead of going to class. “Like breaking [stuff]? For fun. I don’t hate the school. I pulled out the metal bar at the top of the stall for fun. I…yanked it out. Damaging property is the fun part,” an anonymous sophomore boy said.
While there are students who repeatedly damage the school, there are also students who understand and respect building service staff. “These people are underpaid and work for late hours. Half of the kids in the schools do not work half as hard as these people do. They’re the ones cleaning, and they’re not getting paid extra,” junior Maria Thomas said.
The third bathroom, a boys’ bathroom, is shut down due to maintenance rather than vandalism. “We’ve been dealing with an issue with the drain. The drain is on the floor, so any sort of material or liquid that would go normally down through the drain is falling through to the lower level, which is right above the cafeteria. Maintenance has involved both masonry, which is for the concrete, the actual floor around the pipe or the drain, and then the plumber,” De La Rosa said.
The school is trying to fix these bathrooms, originally constructed in 1970. The building’s age results in repairs taking far longer because parts are outdated. “We have to outsource these requests, and we can’t just go to a store and buy these items. They have to be requested sometimes through overseas shipments, which also take a very long time. So we’re working on it,” De La Rosa said.
To help maintenance and building services do their job, the school encourages students to report any damage. “Information is key, and if someone sees anything big or small, anything damaged, please report it; the building service team here is very active. They try to do the best that they can to provide a clean environment for the students. So if we’re made aware of what is happening in the building, we do try to act as soon as possible,” De La Rosa said.
Overall, the main solution to bathrooms shutting down for months at a time is for students to stop damaging the equipment. “If we hold everyone accountable in regards to treating the building with respect, I know we have an old building, but when we break it, it just takes that much longer to fix. So let’s work as a team to deal with these things,” De La Rosa.
Students at this school said they feel that the student body as a whole should treat the school with more care. “This generation only cares about themselves. They don’t care about anyone else. They only care about drugs, vandalizing and hurting other people. It’s not fair, it’s not fair to the people who do the right thing and building services. You make it harder for the people who work and actually care about you by not caring. So get a life,” Thomas said.
