A Better Bathroom Break

Isabella Attallah • November 4, 2024

From graffiti adorning the walls to masses of toilet paper strewn on the floor, the state of Peninsula bathrooms has long been an issue. The sickly-sweet stench of vape was consistently a lingering scent in the air. With most of the toilets clogged, the sinks broken and the soap dispensers empty, the restrooms were almost unusable — that is, the ones that were not locked from severe vandalism. Thankfully, the unsanitary conditions of the restrooms have improved this year with the implementation of a new bathroom policy, which has enhanced the quality of Peninsula’s restrooms by keeping a record of who leaves the classroom to use the bathroom and of how long their visit is. Students must also carry a pass while they use the restroom, consisting of a lanyard with a blue card with the acronym “BR” for “bathroom” printed on. This allows teachers to monitor the duration of students’ time out of the classroom. Consequently, faculty members will have documentation of which students were there if the bathrooms get vandalized, disincentivizing them from committing the vandalism in the first place. This new policy has been greatly beneficial to the previously rundown condition of the restrooms.

“The walls [do not] have any graffiti on them and everything looks fresher,” junior Colin Kim said. “[There has] been a lot less vandalism and [the bathrooms] have been a lot cleaner. The floors are nicer, and the sinks are working. [The bathroom] looks less dirty overall.”

The bathrooms at Peninsula have not had any major renovations since 2002. In the 2022-23 school year, PVPUSD received $500,000 to fix the restrooms at both Peninsula and Palos Verdes High School (Daily Breeze). Now, the school has used this money to renovate the rundown restrooms. These improvements included replacing the peeling paint of the bathroom stalls with new ones, installing new ventilation systems and making other upgrades. The funding for these upgrades was the result of a conference held in Sacramento between local officials and students from Peninsula and Palos Verdes High School. This event, called “Capitol Convoy,” is an annual conference where students, parents and teachers travel to the state capitol to advocate for themselves and the school. Even with this effort, staff soon realized that another step had to be taken to keep the restrooms in good condition. This step was implementing the bathroom policy to lower the risk of vandalism before it started.

“Teachers are aware that we finally got our bathrooms fixed up, so we want to take care of them,” English 1 Honors and English 3 teacher Barbara DeWitt said. “We knew [the bathrooms] needed work for a long time. If we limit who is going in and out of the classroom, there will be less vandalism.”

One of the reasons the new policy was introduced was to reduce the time students spent out of the classroom. This can be inconvenient for other students who also want to use the restroom, especially if the student with the bathroom pass is out of the classroom for a prolonged period. Some may argue that the policy was made to help teachers keep track of who leaves their classroom and not necessarily for the convenience of the students since it limits their access to the restrooms, which is a basic need.

“Although [the new policy is] helping keep the bathrooms safe, a lot of people are still staying there longer than [they are supposed to] because teachers [are not] actually [keeping track of how long a student is out of class], so then [they are] stuck waiting for a bathroom pass to be available,” sophomore Lucia Lopez said. “People are using the bathroom pass to skip class which results in [others] not being able to use the bathroom during class.”

A solution to this problem can be to have two bathroom passes in each class instead of one, so that students would not have to wait as long. However, even with just one pass, the annoyance of delayed bathroom usage is a small price to pay for having clean bathrooms in the long run. Having to wait for clean, open bathrooms is still vastly preferable to having nearly every restroom closed from vandalism.

While the implementation of the bathroom policy has made a substantial impact on students, there are some tweaks that can be made to increase its efficiency and accessibility including having two passes instead of one. This approach to bathrooms has been majorly successful by promoting cleaner and more usable restrooms, as well as keeping students at Peninsula healthy.