Bathrooms are usually seen as a fundamental part of life, but they don’t usually require much discussion. People go, do their business and leave. Recently, though, more and more conversations have sprouted up around Warren Central regarding the bathrooms in the building due to vandalism..
“We are seeing our soap dispensers being pulled off the wall,” Principal Masimba Taylor said in a recent interview. “We're seeing items being stuffed into the toilet.”
The result of these events has led to many of the bathrooms in the building being closed, particularly the boys' bathrooms. This is something that has been affecting the school for quite some time recently.
“I'm pretty disappointed,” junior Xavier Taylor said. “I thought we could at least act our age in high school, but clearly not.”
The school tried to reopen the bathrooms after one of the first instances of vandalism, but they were vandalized again immediately.
“The day we opened them, one was vandalized,” Taylor said.
This vandalism occurred primarily in men’s restrooms, causing many male students to be mad about this entire situation.
“It makes me feel upset that the actions of a few people caused all the boys to suffer,” junior Avery Lile said. “The bathroom should be easy and convenient to use.”
Gates were also placed at the doors to stop students from going into the bathroom. At first, temporary gates were used, but many students did not care and walked in anyway. Permanent lockable gates were then mounted to the walls when the situation became more serious, but, according to Taylor, students even found ways to climb over these gates.
“We did put the gates up so that we're able to close [the bathrooms],” Taylor said. “Unfortunately, we still have some students who gates apparently mean nothing to.”
Some teachers implemented whole-class restroom breaks when Warren Central moved from a traditional bell schedule to block scheduling in 2024, as a way to break up the long class periods. The vandalism has caused even more teachers to implement these classwide restroom breaks. This shows that teachers are slowly becoming more involved in the issue because of how bad it’s gotten.
“It's just as much the [responsibility of] other teachers in the building, not just admin, to take responsibility for the restrooms,” Taylor said.
According to staff, they have always been advised to stay close to the bathrooms during passing periods and conduct sweeps throughout the day. Originally, this was to watch for vaping in the restrooms. Now, the act serves multiple purposes.
“The issue we were really looking at [before] was vaping in the restrooms, and, unfortunately, now we're looking at vaping and vandalism,” Taylor said.
Many teachers, administrators and students are aggravated by this behavior that has created inconvenience for everyone in the school. According to Taylor, it’s especially frustrating knowing that the school is finally nearing the end of its multi-year construction plans to update the building.
“Hopefully we'll start to see people take pride [in the school] because we've done all this work, and I hate that we've done this work and people aren't appreciating it,” Taylor said.