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Student Union
 Sam Braden |
Students should
be treated at least
as well as inmatesDespite the best efforts of school administrators and staff to make the school bathrooms usable, many students never use them. The strong just hold it in, while others decide to leave campus during school hours to relieve themselves. When asked to describe the condition of the bathrooms, one student said, "It's dirty and unsanitary."
"It just gives me the creeps talking about the bathrooms," said another student.
"I called my cousin to come and get me," explained the first student. "I just don't want to use the school bathroom."
"I don't want to use a toilet with a puddle around it," added the second student.
Leaving campus without a pass is a breach of rules that can result in suspension. I talked about this situation with the school nurse. "Isn't it dangerous to hold it like that?" I asked her.
She told me, "If they gotta go, then they going go."
"So there is no physical harm in holding it all day?" I asked her. She finally admitted that holding it might cause some constipation but assured me it would cause no long-term effects.
Every wall on campus has a brand new coat of paint. Every chalkboard has been replaced with a white board that you write on with a special marker.
Teachers frequently talk about standards. The school operates with a standards-based curriculum. On the wall, a poster diagrams the standards for education in each field of study. We have been warned time and again about an inspector coming into the room and asking the class which standard we are learning at the moment. They say that if we all mess up when the time comes, the school could lose its accreditation.
Adults are worried about using markers instead of chalk. Adults are worried about old paint on the walls. Adults are worried about standards of education. Students are worried about going to the bathroom.
There is a college and career center, a gymnasium with a new floor, a weight room, a taro patch, a fish pond, an alternative learning center, computer labs, an air-conditioned band room, an ROTC room, a drama department, soda machines, an auto shop, classes for students who speak English as a second language, a photography lab, a system of different signals for bomb scares and armed shooters, even a store with school T-shirts and pencils.
Yet we do not have bathrooms that students feel comfortable using.
The leader of my school's Junior ROTC program told me, "The military rules from the Geneva Convention state that prisoners of war will be provided necessary items for personal hygiene." Terrorists imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay have access to soap. Shouldn't students be provided the same amenities?
One of the school's solutions to the problem is to allow students to use a single-person, locked and fully stocked bathroom. They can get the key from the attendance office or the nurse's office. But this solution cannot accommodate the 1,800 or so students at school.
The administration and faculty blame the students for the abuse of the facilities. Parents should teach their kids to respect public property. The cycle of abuse continues as administrators point the finger and the bathrooms continue to be a mess and lack basic necessities.
My father attended public school in Hawaii 30 years ago. "School bathrooms in Hawaii have always been like that," he told me. "Why don't you write about something that can change?"
Public bathrooms in Hawaii are in an embarrassing state, whether at school or elsewhere. The behavior that is fostered at our schools, the learning-place for future generations, is the behavior that eventually will dominate our society.
As long as the cycle of abuse continues at Hawaii public schools, we all will have to live with the fact that "that's just the way it is."
Sam Braden, a senior at Kahuku High School, is a reporter for the school newspaper. He was awarded First Place for Literary Arts in 2003 by the Windward Arts Council.
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