Wandering the halls of SC, missing precious instructional time solely with the purpose of having to use the bathroom. This is a constant issue SC students face on a daily basis, Ray Klaczynski ‘25 said. 

“It’s just very frustrating,” Klaczynski said. “It seems like we should all be able to go to the bathroom without walking halfway across the school and missing quality information while doing this.”

As of the fall of the 2021-2022 school year, bathrooms–boys more commonly–have been defaced, SC Associate Principal Greg Gardner said. The TikTok trend going by the name of “Devious Licks” encouraged students to vandalize bathrooms. This then prompted the bathrooms to be shut down for a various amount of time to deal with the damage.

“There have been times where stall doors were ripped off and toilet bowls were smashed,” Gardner said. “We then have to assess the damage and close the bathrooms until they are repaired.”

However, TikTok is not the only culprit for locked bathrooms: vaping is the main reason restrooms are locked, Gardner said. Students have been flushing vapes down toilets, causing them to get clogged, which in turn shuts down the bathrooms until the janitors have fished the vapes out of the pipes.

“While it only may take a few minutes to repair a bathroom, a student who is walking around and sees the same bathroom being closed may think that they are always down for repairs,” Gardner said. 

In an attempt to limit the amount of destruction caused to the bathrooms, student assistants have been located near restrooms during passing periods, making note of the students who are entering and exiting the bathrooms, Gardner said. In turn, when bathrooms are vandalized and vapes are caught in the pipes, the administration is able to narrow down the students who are causing disruption and punish them accordingly. 

“It is absolutely outrageous that LT thinks they get to dictate whether or not the boy students can go to the bathroom on a daily basis,” Tanner Rivera ‘25 said. “The fact that we have to search for a bathroom actually available is just upsetting and cruel.”

Not only are the boys bathrooms locked, girls bathrooms can be closed occasionally, too, Gardner said. Boys bathrooms are closed more often, but it is not a gender-isolated problem.

“We try to get the bathrooms back up and running very quickly,” Gardner said. “The student assistants will report the damage to me and then we will figure out the equipment needed to clean the restrooms. Sometimes it’s as simple as cleaning off the mirror, but other times new appliances are needed.”