Roaming the halls of North Forsyth, the most common complaint heard is that of the bathrooms, old, outdated, gross and a necessity. As one student said, “I don’t even feel safe in them.”
If a student can’t feel safe in a bathroom, how can we expect them to feel comfortable anywhere else inside the school?
When asked, all of the students interviewed stated they only use two out of the many bathrooms provided. Many avoid most bathrooms for fear of being “involved” in illegal activity, specifically the 300s “Yellow Bathroom.”
Bathrooms are necessary in every public area, and it’s great that we have so many… but whatever happened to quality over quantity?
Throughout our school, we have many well-placed bathrooms that are extremely convenient to access, but once you enter it becomes apparent that they aren’t shown enough attention.
Out of the many bathrooms our school has, only one female restroom has a tampon dispenser. And it’s broken. Going to get sanitary products from the nurse takes away from class time, not to mention the embarrassment of having to ask a teacher to go get them. If these were put in bathrooms and properly maintained it would save many female students the time and embarrassment.
For students who aren’t able to financially purchase these restroom supplies this is a major inconvenience, I mean if we have to be here then we should be supplied with proper products in order to do so comfortably and easily.
One common complaint about our bathrooms is that the stall doors are either too short, have gaps, or in some cases both. One bathroom notoriously named the “Yellow Bathroom” (200s) out of every bathroom I asked students about, this one stuck out. It is the most common bathroom that students think is unsafe and practically unusable because it contains every issue I’ve listed so far.
Another huge complaint is the size of the stall doors. I, a 5 ‘4 girl, can see over half of the bathroom stalls. If that doesn’t emphasize the outdated infrastructure of the bathroom stalls then I don’t know what will. Here at Raider Nation, we have many different people with varying heights, we need to care for people of all sizes to ensure everyone feels as comfortable as possible.
Some bathrooms, such as both sets of 400s bathrooms, are newly updated with no stall gap, perfect for genuine privacy. That is a prime example of what we want here; Safe, usable, clean bathrooms that we can use without having to worry about our privacy or safety.
