The bathrooms at Rangeview High School have reopened this month after being closed for the last few weeks for what students seemingly believed was for no reason. This is far from an uncommon occurrence here at Rangeview, as many of the bathrooms were closed for even longer last year. However, this is the first we’ve seen of so many restrooms being closed at one time. 

The question remains for Rangeview students, “Why were the bathrooms closed in the first place?”

“I think the bathrooms are closed because students can’t stop being immature,” said senior Cassidy Duganieri. “It’s still irritating and frustrating for the rest of us though.”

Administrator Linda Moriarity is the one of the Raider ad-team responsible for sending out the notice to close the bathrooms. Moriarity placed the blame for the closures on something the school is all too familiar with, vandalism.

For years, vandalism has been an issue within every high school around the country, only becoming more frequent since the “Devious Licks” trend last year with students stealing all sorts of things like soap dispensers, toilet paper holders and in some cases, stall doors. 

Although the trend has almost entirely died down at Rangeview, it’s not uncommon to find the soap dispensers missing or shoved in urinals. This, coupled with trash being thrown around the bathrooms led to three of the most commonly vandalized bathrooms being closed.

“We only have so many campus monitors,” said Moriarty as she went on to state how there’s not enough monitors to watch all the bathrooms and all the exits. But the monitors aren’t the only ones affected, as the school custodians are also being impacted, being the ones who are tasked with replacing the missing utilities and cleaning up the bathrooms. 

“There aren’t great solutions, I feel like kids are always going to find a way to do stuff,” 

Although this decision has come with good intentions in mind, students have shown that they’re not too happy about the closures. Senior Lucas Mural voiced his opinions stating, “Kids will do drugs and ditch regardless of if the bathrooms are closed or not.” 

While Mural’s reasoning isn’t the reason the bathrooms were closed, it does show just how uninformed the students were about the situation, as very few knew the real reason. Mural would go on to say that the closures “punish innocent teens who need to go do their business,” something that would be recognized by staff and students alike.

As of right now, the once closed bathrooms are reopened, but the doors will remain propped open to discourage groups of students from gathering in them. Whether the decision to close them in the first place was a good choice, it will hopefully deter future vandalism and encourage all students to respect the resources within the school. 

As Mrs. Moriarity puts it, “I’d like students to understand that we are all a community and to an extent, a family and this is the place where we are here all day long. I’d like students to just show some respect towards the building and in turn the staff and other students.”