Almost everyone  in their high school career has had a bathroom problem. For example, little Johnny has 4th period lunch and puts to much Texas Pete Hot sauce on his Chicken Patty and pounds down two chocolate milks. The next period he has US History and about 25 minutes into the period, he feels it coming.He has to go.

However, there’s a problem, a problem he’s had countless times before . He doesn’t have bathroom passes; he has to wait. The period bell rings and he hurries down to the bathroom, grabs for the door handle, and pulls with all of his might.

Next problem? The door is locked. With his bladder full, he begs and pleads to the bathroom attendant, but to no avail, she tells him to  go to class.

Problem 3: he has Biology after that and can’t go because they are taking notes. He also can’t go to the bathroom the period after that because he has used his bathroom passes in that class as well.

After holding it for three periods, a total of 2 hours of 15 minutes, he finally had gym and a chance to use the restroom.

Some people might say hold it, but regrettably, students who deal with this are not paying attention to the lesson at the front of the class.

One might be thinking this is a nice little made up sob story about a kid who had to go pee. But this is no sob story; it’s my story. Last year, I had to go through this countless times, holding it like a man, crying on the inside, while getting rejected by every teacher I asked. In my opinion, no one should have to go through this.

 In middle school whenever I ran out of bathroom passes or a teacher denied me, it would be ok. On my way to my next class I would stop at the nearest bathroom and go then. No problems whatsoever. It used to so convenient and easy. At the high school not so much.

 “When you gotta go to the bathroom you gotta go. It’s as simple as that,” said Dale Rohloff.  

Sophomore Alexis DeRosa argues that bathrooms should be open between periods “because when else are we supposed to go when teachers dont let us go and give us passes?”

 If a majority of students feel this way about the bathroom rule, why doesn’t the administration just change it?

Dr. Rudnesky explained some of the thinking behind it, citing safety as an important concern.

When you keep the bathrooms unattended, it is very difficult to monitor who is going in and out of them and if bad things occur in them, you don’t know who it was.

“Obviously it would be very hard to monitor for smoking, now in the past students used to smoke real cigarettes in the bathroom and way back there used to be fires as a result,” she said.

But times have changed and technology has gotten better, and kids now vape in the bathrooms. So no more fire hazard.

Rudnesky added that “hopefully not doing anything worse than vaping you know maybe selling, doing inappropriate things.”

Mr. Hinson said basically the same but understood the desire students have for open restrooms.

“They need to be used,” he said.  “I wish we could monitor them because some kids abuse them and still go to the bathroom every period.”

The safety of the students trumps every rule in the school. However, are there better solutions than to not letting us go in between the periods?

One solution could be that administration allow students to go in between the periods, but a teacher or bathroom attendant must be in the bathroom the time and students must sign in before they go in.

Another easy solution may be keeping the bathroom closed in between the periods and eliminating bathroom passes and allow students to go once per period, so they aren’t put in the situation of having to go but not being able to.

In the end, the administration might not want us to go when it’s inconvenient for them, not not letting us go is inconvenient for us as well.

And I believe as human beings we should be allowed to go to the bathroom whenever we want.