Restrooms are essential to our human life. A restroom is a place where you can go to on your leisure or when you really need to let it rip; it is a private place that tends to your needs. With that being said, there are also public restrooms and well…that is a completely different story from your typical house restrooms.
Now the differences between a public restroom and your own private restroom do not have to be too different at all right? As long as you maintain your restroom, keep the toilet clean, throw your toilet paper in an actual trash can, and clean the sinks, there won’t be any problems. Aside from the fact that the restroom is shared by many people, a public restroom is more or less the same as a private restroom right?
Unfortunately, it is not as simple as that.
Huntington Park High School is a school in which thousands of bright young students attend. There are seven restrooms available to us but of the seven, only 2-3 restrooms are actually open for us to use. This becomes a very serious problem when there are a lot of people wanting to use the restrooms and then we have a very crowded situation.
The restrooms in the main building, for the most part, are always open, however, the same can not be said about the restrooms located by the weight room and the 300’s building. The restrooms by the weight room are seemingly only open during lunchtime and then they are closed during 4th. This does not make sense especially after lunch since you eat and if you understand basic human anatomy, you typically have to go to the bathroom after you eat.
Since the restrooms in the main building are pretty much the only reliable restrooms to go to, it becomes a hindrance to many that have classes that are not close to the said location.
“It really sucks. I have to go all the way down the 300s stairs to the main building just to use the restroom and it hurts my knee.”, Brandon Padilla, Junior.
This brings us to another problem with our restrooms. They are really, really, *really* dirty.
“There was a short period of time where there was no trash can in the girl’s restroom so there were a bunch of pads and toilet paper all over the floor”-Anonymous, Senior.
I myself walk into the boy’s restroom and see a floor filled with what I’m praying is water.
I get that recent incidents of students being caught doing bad things such as vaping in the restrooms have all transpired to such measures but not everyone in this school goes to the restroom to do that stuff.
It is unfair to the people who actually need to use the restroom only to find that they have to walk all the way to a specific restroom that’s full with many other people.
I think that all restrooms should be open for us during all times of the day. To prevent any misconduct from occurring, there has to be more supervision as well.
At the end of the day, not even us students are completely free from any faults that lead to such poor restroom conditions. Do not be messy. Flush the toilet after you poop and actually aim when you’re peeing. It’s not rocket science. Even though it’s a public restroom, it’s still *our* school restroom. Do your part and keep it clean, we can’t pin all our inconveniences at the school. Let’s show the staff that we are responsible.
Also, please remember to wash your hands.
By Ethan Melendrez, Features Editor