Flushing Out the Facts: A Bathroom Breakdown

A lack of sufficient bathrooms leads to missed class time and overburdened facilities. Photo: Joseph Trontz

The Midwood Argus is an open forum and welcomes a diversity of student opinion. The views expressed in the paper should not be taken to represent those of the administration, faculty, or the student body as a whole. To submit a letter to the editor, click the button on our homepage.

By JOSEPH TRONTZ

It’s 10:15 on a Monday morning. You’re tired, angry, and in the middle of English class in Room 467 when you feel that familiar urge. “Mr. L., can I use the bathroom?” you ask, anxiously glancing at the clock. “When Chloe comes back,” he says.

You look at the front door to notice the pass is gone — but the urge isn’t. Finally, after what feels like hours, Chloe casually walks in as if she wasn’t just filming TikToks in the staircase. 

“You can go,” says Mr. L., but you’re already out the door by that time. You speedwalk down the fourth floor hallway to the A staircase, run down the stairs until you’re on the second floor, strut through the annex bridge, and slide down the annex stairs. At last, you’re at the girls’ bathroom. A sense of relief washes over you as you turn the knob but – click click. It’s locked. You look at your phone. It’s 10:21, and you hate your life. 

Unfortunately, this is the reality for kids at Midwood. There are only five open student bathrooms (plus the gender neutral stall) for 4,000 students, and school policy is that the facilities are locked for ten minutes at the start and end of every class, as well as the five minutes during passing. This means that for half the school day, students are unable to use the bathrooms — and when they do, they often have to travel long distances.

For boys, the only two bathrooms are on the first floor of the annex and in the basement of the main building, so if you’re on a far away floor, the roundtrip commute alone can take several minutes.

According to administration, this policy is in place to prevent student tardiness and give the custodial staff time to clean the bathrooms.

“Over the years, we found an issue with students congregating in the restrooms during passing and into the next period, which led to disciplinary issues,” explained Mr. Richard Franzese, the assistant principal of safety and security. “Once we implemented the 10-5-10 rule, these incidents significantly decreased.”

As for the limited number of bathrooms, Mr. Franzese said that the school would “love to open more student bathrooms, but some problems come with that.”

“First is the plumbing,” he said. “The reason the boys bathroom in the main building is closed right now is because of plumbing issues. Second, with the student bathrooms, we need a staff member outside to supervise, and we don’t have the resources for that.”

The result is that Midwood’s student-to-bathroom ratio is way out of balance with that of many other schools, which sometimes have both girls’ and boys’ bathrooms on every floor, plus multiple gender neutral stalls. Beacon High School, for example, has six girls’ bathrooms, six boys’ bathrooms, and three gender neutral stalls for 1,400 students, which is approximately one-third of Midwood’s student body.

Besides their availability, the biggest issue students have with the school bathrooms is their sanitary conditions, due to overuse. “They’re disgusting,” said Ben Brinzensky ‘25. “The janitors actually do a good job, but by the time period six rolls around, they’re unusable.”

“It smells bad all the time, especially the one in the annex,” said Nicole Li ‘27.

One junior, Kevin Deng, even created an Instagram account dedicated to school bathroom reform. Deng writes, “The problem that I hope to address is the dirtiness of the school bathrooms that we have to put up with. Once one person starts trashing it, it just keeps getting worse and worse.” Deng’s mission, his three-stage bathroom reform project, can be found at @schoolbathroomreforms on Instagram.

Another big issue students have with the bathrooms is that they are sometimes crowded with students who aren’t there to use the bathroom, but who are instead on their phones or talking to friends.

These two issues are very connected. Bathrooms often get crowded with students who are just looking for a place to skip class. If there were more student bathrooms — and remember that the school wouldn’t even need to build any, they would just have to reopen some — students wouldn’t have to deal with these problems. This would also solve the time issue, as students wouldn’t have to make lengthy trips just to use the bathroom.

For all these reasons, repairing this plumbing and finding room in the budget to place staff near these bathrooms should be a priority.

One AP Chemistry teacher, Mr. Cameron Jahn, gave his two cents: “Students often are gone from the classroom for long periods of time, as they have to travel to a bathroom that's far away. When they get there, there are long waits, making what should be a 2-3 minute trip into a 10-15 minute one.”

If the school reopened student bathrooms, they would be killing two birds with one stone, for both students’ and teachers’ sake.