Parents and Students Get Potty-Mouthed

Get to know students and parents in most communities well enough, and pretty soon someone will go and get potty-mouthed.

We don’t say this to mean they sprinkle their conversations with expletives.

Actually, what we mean is quite literal – the conversation turns to talk of toilets, bathroomstalls and sinks.

Few things make parents and students more frustrated, it has been our experience, than bathrooms that are unclean, dangerous, covered in graffiti, or smelly.

Institute co-director Monique Henderson, when working as a newspaper reporter in Mississippi and California, regularly received phone calls from parents complaining about bathroom conditions. And principals have even lost their jobs in some cases after community frustration with the condition of bathrooms became too intense.

That is why this article about a principal who removed the doors of the girls’ bathroom stalls after unsuccessfully battling graffiti, is interesting.

The incident garnered national attention after a group of parents complained at a board meeting that their children’s right to privacy was violated by the principal’s removal of the stall doors. (The door was left on one stall in both the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms.)

The parents who complained were likely happy to learn that the stall doors were returned – after students successfully went a week without vandalizing the bathrooms.

Why does this story matter? And why are parents and students so likely to become upset by bathrooms that are dirty or otherwise substandard?

We believe that something negative does, indeed, happen to the psyche of young people when they are repeatedly placed in places that are ugly, unappealing or otherwise demoralizing. In time, students forced to use the bathroom in foul conditions get the message that they are unworthy of a place that is clean, well stocked and safe. And that begins to take its toll, causing students to feel that the bathrooms are, somehow, a reflection of them.

At the same time, we know that students across this country are guilty of vandalizing bathrooms. They have been known to flood bathrooms by stopping up sinks and toilets, wasting toilet paper, and covering the walls with graffiti, among other things.

What have you seen in your community? Do school bathrooms matter? Have you seen a school that does a good job of keeping bathrooms clean and battling bathroom vandalism? What do you think should be done?