The Lincoln Log

As soon as teachers dismiss their students, the halls begin to fill. Students storm the hallways during passing period to get to their next class or the nearest restroom. Those that rush in to the restrooms are only to be met with long lines that’ll cause them to be late for class. To make matters worse, they’re met with the foul smell of urine and feces. Do they stay and wait, or rush out in disgust? When there’s a shortage of toilet paper and poop is smeared all over the toilet seats, some students find themselves in a predicament.

“I had to go back to my dad’s house because I had to take a crap and I didn’t want to use the school’s [restroom],” senior Dylan Li said. “It’s wet and dirty, and there’s piss all over the toilets, and an excess of wet towels and toilet paper. It’s pretty disgusting.”

Li wasn’t the only student who admitted to leaving school in order to use the restroom. All students that were interviewed who haven’t left school to use restrooms admit to thinking about leaving.

“[If I had to use the restroom] I’d just go, and don’t flush the toilet,” junior Billy Wong said. “Because when I flush it, the water doesn’t go [down].”

Several of the toilets at Abraham Lincoln High School are either broken or unsanitary, which causes students to feel as if they can’t use the school restrooms.

“It’s all the human feces. It gets all clogged up and people don’t flush it right and it starts to flood,” senior Kevin Sandovoung said. “The bathrooms are all filthy and I don’t want to sit on a filthy toilet seat; it’s uncomfortable.”

There are clean bathrooms in the school, however we can’t use them.

“The third floor bathroom is the cleanest one, but that’s probably because it’s never open,” senior Megan Scott said. Once in a while these restrooms are open during STAR testing and Exit Exams. These bathrooms aren’t open on a daily basis because of poor behavior from the first and second floor restrooms.

“People aren’t being responsible about the second and first floor[bathrooms], and if the third floor is[ opened], and that one is broken too, then we’d have no bathrooms,” principal Ronald Pang said.

Some students claim to find destruction in restrooms from time to time.

“[Girls] need to pick up their pads and tampons. It’s everywhere!” senior Annie Yim said.

In the female restrooms, blood trails can often time be found across the toilet seats and floor when girls have their monthly cycle. Some female students cannot perform the sanitary task of throwing used feminine products into small trashcans provided.

“[There was] a bunch of [40 oz. bottles of beer] emptied and the whole bathroom was trashed. They took all the paper and threw it everywhere, and knocked over the garbage bin,” senior Irina Davidovich said, “I think [the restrooms] got worse over time.”

Many are not aware that their responsibility as students include much more than studying and attending class, but also simple tasks such as keeping the school restroom clean for others. They believe the janitors will clean up the mess, and that it’s okay to leave one. However, this is not the case because all students share the same restrooms; and nobody is willing to wash their hands in a sink filled with feces.

Keeping the restroom clean is as simple as wiping after ourselves, flushing the toilets, and throwing away used paper towels and feminine products. These basic tasks would make the restroom that much cleaner.

“The students can take the bathroom back, or the adults can get the bathrooms in order for the students; and students may not like what we have to do to get that done,” athletic director Kenyetta Scott said. Some measures that teachers and administrators have in mind are extreme, but unless students can clean up their acts, they may be forced to be met with such boundaries.

“[I would suggest putting] cameras outside of the bathrooms, so that you can have a record of who goes in and who comes out. [If] we have a regular check after each period you’d know [how] the bathrooms looked [before], and how they look now,” Scott said.

Security cameras would cost the school a large amount of money and the time to maintain them. Privacy becomes an issue to anyone who is perturbed by a camera monitoring the number of times they have used the restrooms. Although this was a suggestion, there are other serious consequences that may actually happen.

“If [students] aren’t being responsible we’ll start locking the bathrooms and then they’ll need to get a key,” Pang said. “Faculty doesn’t use the [student] bathrooms; it is just the students who really need to be more responsible.”

Lincoln High is eager to open up the third floor bathrooms, but it is up the students to make a change. If Lincoln students are impatient with the first and second floor bathrooms, they should be responsible for their personal actions. Mr. Pang recently placed air fresheners in restrooms in order to improve the stench. However, later during the same day, a student tore the air fresheners off the ceiling.

If students desire cleaner bathrooms, or just want to keep them open, they must take the initiative to improve them. Lincoln students should be obligated to preventing messes and prevent any future issues by reporting those that are causing messes, or just clean up their personal wastes.