The bell rings, alerting students that lunch has ended and it is now time to return to class. You watch your friends head off while you go to use the bathroom before class starts.

Expecting peace, you walk into the restroom only to find the opposite; groups of people are gathered by the sink or inside the stalls, lunch trays are scattered across the floor and there is trash everywhere. You do your best to push past the crowd and find an open stall, only to realize its lock is broken. You then desperately search for one that locks, instead finding the rest occupied by groups of friends laying on the floor together, doing who knows what. 

This is what I, and many other individuals, experience numerous times a day when using restrooms at Blue Valley Northwest. It has become an ordeal to use the bathrooms located by the main lunchroom or the atrium, since they are constantly trashed with leftover food or other unpleasant items. This is not only extremely uncomfortable for students just trying to use the restroom, but is also blatantly disrespectful to the janitors and other people who are responsible for keeping our restrooms clean and accessible. 

Along with the mess made by students, it is worth discussing the amount of socialization present within Northwest bathrooms. It seems that many individuals choose the restroom as a place to gather around in groups and hang out, preventing others from having a normal bathroom experience. 

I believe congregating in the bathrooms should not be tolerated because, in my opinion, it’s simply gross. Knowing how many germs are typically in a public restroom keeps me from wanting to sit on the floor, let alone eat my lunch there. 

What people choose to do with their lives is their own business, but when it affects other people and creates an uncomfortable public environment, I believe they should have enough decency to realize that. Having bathrooms trashed and food thrown everywhere is something that may be normal for kids below the age of 12, but we are in high school, and we should be mature enough to move past these childish behaviors.

As for the huddles of people, there must be somewhere different where groups can gather and do as they please – why does it have to be in the middle of the bathroom? As a society, we have been preached to on what behaviors are considered “normal” for people, but what I experience daily in the bathroom continues to defy these expectations. This leads me to believe that basic principles are not being taught, or are just being disregarded completely, which needs to change, especially at Northwest. 

Blue Valley Northwest has a 98 percent graduation rate, according to Jamie Berry, Northwest’s Registrar. There is no doubt that we go to a very prominent and well-respected school, so we should be treating it like it deserves. As a female student, I only encounter issues in the girls’ restroom, so I can only imagine the mess that the boys’ restroom entails. 

Speaking as a teenager myself, I know we can do a better job of respecting our school and our community. A good first step is to hang out and eat with your friends outside of the bathroom, and simply throw away food and other waste in the garbage cans provided at lunch, not on the bathroom floor.