Stop. Wait. 

Look at your hands. 

Where have they been? 

On average, there are between ten thousand to ten million bacteria on each of your hands. Every day, hundreds of students in the Lebanon Trail High School use these multimillionaire hands to touch the newly distributed bathroom passes. Every day for the rest of the year. 

It has been exactly 14 days of school. That is 105 hours of premeditated germ sharing happening daily within your general vicinity, sometimes right in front of you. 

Think of that classmate you really hate. Their grubby, disgusting hands have probably touched that bathroom pass you used the other day in 3rd period Algebra I. Chances are they didn’t even wash their hands. In fact, only 50% of high school students actually wash their hands and even fewer use soap. Whatever happens in that bathroom is between them and the Lord. Even peeing on the passes doesn’t seem so unbelievable now. With all the statistics in mind, I can only conclude that those things are DISGUSTING. And many agree. 

“Conceptually, the policy is fine and normal, but the passes are so dirty. I don’t trust them one bit,” a senior who has chosen to remain anonymous said. 

And, really, isn’t that what school is supposed to be about? Trust? How can we wake up and prepare for that grit mindset if we cannot even trust our own grittier bathrooms? And this isn’t about the condition or state of the bathrooms. No, this is something far beyond that. This boils down to our very psychology. 

Perception is everything, after all. Psychologists say that perception molds, shapes, and influences our experience of our personal reality. So, by thinking the passes are disgusting, people will begin to associate the bathrooms as disgusting as well, even though they aren’t that bad.

Not to mention, the timing is atrocious. 

“You have to hold your pee in for a really long time,” Rachel Schulte, a victim of bathroom policies one too many times, said. “If somebody takes the bathroom pass before you, and then another person does, you have to wait 20 minutes to use the restroom.” 

You may as well just pee your pants already. What is the point of a bathroom if we are not going to use it? There should not have to be potty protectors in a high school setting. 

Yes, there are exceptions for emergencies depending on the situation with any particular student. That is a real thing all the time no matter what. But, there are some consequences to that. Not everyone will know when something will turn into an emergency. Not everyone will speak up if it is. Not everyone will make it.

And, by then, it’s already too late. 

“It’s bad,” Schulte said, referring to holding in your pee. “And it can be painful if you do it for a very long time and you might even pee your pants.” `

It can’t be healthy to hold it in either. Hydration is also currently trending right now so that guarantees more trips per day. All in all, just not a good recipe for the ongoing order of operations. 

However, I get the concept. I really do. It’s quite innovative as well, a way to keep students in their respective hallways and to keep bathrooms orderly, especially with all the activities that some people get up to. 

The system is still flawed, though. 

People who take fine arts classes have to walk all the way down to the AP offices just to use the bathroom. There are still students out without passes that could be just going anywhere, either to help faculty staff on a one-off errand or out on extracurricular business. 

Regardless, students who want to break rules and use bathrooms for something other than their intended purpose will find a way to do that. End of story. Enforcing more rules just makes everyone miserable and cranky while the people who pull the pranks and host the last suppers’ (the incident that occurred in the bathroom two years ago) will still find an opportunity to get what they want. 

And don’t just believe me, believe the numbers. According to a survey randomly conducted asking students to rate the bathroom policy on a scale from 1 to 5, the average ended up at a crazy 1.8125. To be nice, let’s round that up to 2. 

This is what our Yelp review would be. Would you go somewhere Yelp rated a 2 out of 5 stars? 

Let’s flush this crap.