Students at Franklin High play the guessing game of which bathroom is open, after many are locked.

Everyone knows that a teacher’s favorite question to receive in the middle of a lesson is, “Can I go to the bathroom?”. It is hard to say no to a student when this is asked no matter if they’re in the beginning of a lesson, middle, or even during a test. Teachers are concerned that the kids are missing too much when they ask to leave. The time is not getting any quicker either when one or more bathrooms are locked.

Throughout the year, a student will sporadically ask to go to the bathroom, find themselves locked out of it, and have to travel a further distance to another bathroom. This isn’t bad once in a while: it may even be considered a well needed walk during a long lecture. This is not the case for the C Wing boys’ bathroom.

The C Wing bathroom is said to be the one most vandalized by students. But B Wing also has a stall door missing, and it is very rare to find a stall with a door that locks anymore in any bathroom.

For almost the entire school year this year, and most of last year, the boys’ C Wing bathroom has been out of order. Forcing kids to miss there classes and walk to the lunch room bathroom, the next closest bathroom. This adds on at least another 3 minutes to the excuser. Although 3 minutes might not seem like a long time it is intact a very long time when missing valuable knowledge.

One student Doug Buckley spoke on the matter of the locked doors.

“It’s really inconvenient for everyone.” Doug said.

He then goes on to talk about how it effects his learning.

“Its a significantly longer walk…so if i have to go to the bathroom in math, I have to miss calc.” Doug said.

The leading authority on the subject, Mr. Schmidt also had much to say about the problem.

“We had to lock one of the bathrooms because it is constantly vandalized.” Schmidt says.

He also informed us that next year there won’t even be doors in the bathroom but instead there will be privacy walls to try to avoid the vandalism.

The problem created by shutting these doors is that students are now missing class. Not only are they missing class but they are being questioned, or even punished about why they were gone so long. Including teachers asking what we were doing, making some students uncomfortable.

The only way to get students to spend more time in class is to open up the bathrooms, and monitor them more frequently.