Students engaging in illicit activity in school bathrooms isn’t a new phenomenon, but one Illinois school is taking drastic measures to curb it. Oak Park and River Forest High School decided that removing exterior bathroom doors is the most effective solution. This way, there is one less barrier for students to hide behind, and it’s a move that seems to be working for the school. Although some students support it, not everyone does — and those students are making it a mission to get the doors restored.
“I want to feel safe, and then I feel like a bunch other of my peers — like, I did this for them too,” Laila Rosenthal, a junior at OPRF, told CBS News. Rosenthal started a Change.org petition to get the school to put the doors back on the bathrooms, and it has more than 500 signatures thus far.
The decision to remove the exterior doors on the school bathrooms was made after complaints were made about students using the bathroom to vape, among other activities, WGN reported. Removing the doors is supposed to deter students from congregating in bathrooms.
According to school officials, doors have not been removed where bathroom stalls, urinals, or mirrors could be seen from the entryway, and doors remain on the stalls. Additionally, gender neutral bathrooms still have their doors intact. The director of campus safety at the high school claims the change has been working. Administrators have received fewer complaints about bathroom behavior this year.
“The decision to remove the exterior doors of most bathrooms at the school was based on an evidence-based practice in architecture called crime prevention through environmental design or CPTED,” read a statement on the decision. “The bathroom entrances now function similarly to those you see at airports, many schools, and other public places where the bathrooms do not have entrance doors.”
But the reduction in incidents doesn’t matter to some students. They believe other corrective actions should have been taken.
“I think that they could have done things like vape detectors or smoke detectors, because those do exist,” OPRF junior Gia Fredrisdorf told CBS News.
She also believes that the change to the school bathrooms poses a safety issue. “If you’re in the bathroom, you have to hide in the bathroom from like a school shooter or something,” she said. “If there’s no doors in the bathroom, that’s another risk.”
However, many comments on the petition express support, both from students and strangers.
“These young kids will one day soon be young adults,” one commenter wrote. “They need the privacy. They need the trust. Stop trying to control everything. Doesn’t this world have enough of that right now? It’s the bathroom. Let them pee in peace. Trust them.”
Despite the pushback, some students find the change welcome.
“It definitely makes a huge difference,” Donovan Lee told CBS News. “I haven’t seen too many people come in to like vape or do anything like that.” Another student, Venus Sokolowski, also expressed support.
“I’m really happy, because people used to vape there, and like less people are doing it now,” she said.
