Clarke Central High School restrooms are repeatedly covered in graffiti, requiring frequent, extra and unnecessary tasks for the custodial staff.
By ETHAN CRANE – Viewpoints Writer
As I walked into the first floor restroom, the faint odor of paint hit me. The graffiti on the walls that had made me both chuckle and cringe had been shrouded by a shiny coat of beige.
Clarke Central High School bathrooms are repeatedly defaced and damaged by students, both in the form of graffiti and damage to the rooms’ fixtures. This problem could easily be stopped by the effort of students and would help to relieve an additional burden from the school’s custodial staff. Cartoon by Marina Byrne.
It is not a shock to walk into the bathroom to find toilet paper draping the ceiling like party streamers with mountain-like formations of it heaped on the floor, fresh graffiti on the wall and overflowing sinks stuffed with trash. The initial shock of walking into such a situation wears off quickly, as the appalling mess is all too common.
Seeing crude or gang-related messages tagged along the sides of stalls and next to sinks does not give our school a positive image. The scrawl makes both students and visitors feel uncomfortable and often unsafe.
Is this what we wish to show as our public face?
Students may not consider bathrooms to be integral to educational instruction, but the reality is our facilities are used by students every day, as well as visitors to CCHS.
Because students generally do not report graffiti in the bathrooms, faculty and staff members are left to be the reporters of restroom conditions.
“We always notify the custodial staff immediately when we see (graffiti) because we like to get it off as soon as possible,” CCHS assistant principal Dr. Sheila Dunham said. “We’ve learned that graffiti begets more graffiti which begets more graffiti. If we leave it on there, the entire wall will get covered because students may think that we don’t care.”
It is not always convenient to remove this graffiti, however, due to fumes released by paints and mark removers. As result, the bathrooms cannot be re-painted or cleaned using these products during school hours, causing a prolonged exposure to undesirable bathroom conditions for many.
“(CCHS) has more problems than just getting graffiti off the walls,” CCHS night head custodian Michael Brookins said. “The custodians could be concentrating on or fixing something else. There are a lot of things to be done, and it’s harder when you spend 30 minutes trying to get (graffiti) off the wall.”
School resources are being used to try to keep our bathrooms looking presentable, which is a waste of time and energy for the custodial staff.
While making sure that graffiti is kept to a minimum is important, completely removing it from the bathrooms is a lofty aspiration. CCHS has multiple bathrooms on each floor, making it hard to monitor continually, thus adding a further burden to the administration and the custodial staff.
Putting the burden of having to constantly re-paint parts of the school’s many bathrooms is not fair to CCHS’ custodians, who work hard to keep our school as clean as it is. Students must make more of an effort to disregard bathroom messages and to furthermore discontinue the spread of graffiti in the bathrooms.
Collectively, the school building and its facilities represents CCHS students. We should be embarrassed that the bathrooms have been continually defaced and mistreated.
Although bathrooms seem to be a minute, forsaken corner of CCHS, they are facilities we cannot, and should not, treat like trash.
