Recently, students have observed unhygienic habits being practiced every day in the Seminole High School bathrooms. Ironically, the most unhealthy practices have been occurring in Health Academy, whose restrooms frequently lack critical supplies like toilet paper, soap, and towels.

Health Academy freshman Xzavier Love said,“The Health Academy bathrooms are disgusting. The soap dispensers never have any soap in them, there’s never any paper towels, and [there’s] always stuff on the floors. It feels like they never clean them and now I avoid using them because of it.”

The Seminole conducted a study over five days in March to assess the severity of the toilet paper crisis. The girls’ upstairs Health Academy bathroom was inspected at 12:00 pm daily to avoid any confounding variables. The results were as follows:

• On Day 1, zero out of four stalls contained toilet paper. One out of three dispensers contained paper towels.
• On Day 2, two out of four stalls contained toilet paper. All three dispensers contained paper towels.
• On Day 3, one out of four stalls contained toilet paper. One out of three dispensers contained paper towels.
• On Day 4, three out of four stalls had minimal toilet paper. One out of three dispensers contained paper towels.
• On Day 5, all four stalls had toilet paper. One out of three dispensers contained paper towels.

Thus, the lack of toilet paper is a consistent hygiene issue in the Health Academy bathrooms. It is obviously imperative that toilets contain this necessity, so these statistics should be a cause of alarm to many.

Another issue afflicting these bathrooms is the lack of soap. Some students believe that the custodians need to play a more active role in updating the bathrooms with supplies such as toilet paper, paper towels, and soap throughout the day.

Due to the problems in the Health Academy bathrooms, many Health students find themselves walking to different buildings to use the restroom. This causes them to be hassled by administration for being out of bounds; students have reported being threatened with a discipline referral for “skipping.”

“Sometimes I would be in Health [Academy] and when I got to the bathrooms, there would be water everywhere on the floor and paper towels spread all over. I shouldn’t have to go walk to Renegade to use a cleaner restroom and risk getting in trouble for it,” said an SHS sophomore, speaking under the condition of anonymity.

Ultimately, students who use these restrooms notice a lack of effort towards maintenance, and they request more frequent monitoring of the bathroom supplies. Students are also responsible for keeping the bathrooms clean by ensuring that supplies such as paper towels and toilet paper are in their designated locations.