Strange smells. Thick air. Layers of grime. Broken sinks. No soap. Water is too hot, then too cold. Cracked tile. Toilets spasming out of control. Air dryers blasting billions of germs onto your clammy hands. 

While these are all issues the bathrooms at Portsmouth High School face, I would like to bring to your attention a different set of issues brought on not by our faculty or funding, but by our students. 

Strange substances on the walls. Crude writings on every stall door. Makeup streaked on the mirrors. Puffs of colorfully flavored smoke wistfully dancing through the air. The choking stench of weed in certain wings. School lunches scattered here and there. Trash strewn across the floors and left in toilets.

This is not about a lack of janitors or faculty care. This is about a lack of respect from students.

Using the restroom at PHS should not be an agonizing, nauseating, or painfully overstimulating experience. At a basic level, school bathrooms are supposed to meet your fundamental human needs. They don’t need to be fancy, just clean, functional, and usable, and too often these qualities are restricted by student behavior. 

Maggie Alip, a junior at PHS, describes our bathrooms as “sub-par.” She says it constantly “smells like vape, and the walls have things drawn all over them.” 

“One time I found a whole bag of cucumbers in the toilet,” Alip remarks. 

This may sound like a joke, a class prank that everyone could be in on, but it’s not. It’s just another example of students treating our spaces with disrespect. 

Alip is not alone in her frustration. 

Ryan Charland, a PHS junior, once found an old balloon blown up and tied around the handle of one of the urinals. 

The drama of Charland’s experience contrasts with that of Claire Sargent, a freshman at PHS who has noticed the expansive writing on the wall. While Sargent declared she is “not particularly offended by it,” she recognizes that it is disrespectful to the school and wishes people would stop.

Just because something doesn’t personally bother you doesn’t mean it’s okay. A bathroom covered in graffiti and writing might seem harmless and funny to some, but it creates a neglected environment and is downright gross.

Victoria Chini, also a freshman, states she “doesn’t really go to the bathrooms for that particular reason [bits of old food, school lunches, uncomfortable, etc…] When there’s vandalism and writing [in the bathrooms], teachers become more strict about rules, like who can leave and when.” 

Chini continues by remarking that this is not fair to other students who do not disrespect the bathrooms and deserve the freedom to leave class when they need to use the restroom.

The thing is, these are issues that can and should be avoided, yet it seems this maturity has escaped my generation.

The students’ lack of care for our building is alarming, considering the 2023 survey from College Rover that reported 45% of Gen Z claim to be germaphobes, as a result of COVID. Perhaps those statistics are outdated or just simply do not apply to Portsmouth students, because the state of our bathrooms speaks volumes in opposition to that statistic. 

The way students treat these spaces is disrespectful to the janitors, the school, and their classmates. At the very least, the bathroom facilities should be clean and free of old food, bits of miscellaneous trash, and makeup smeared on mirrors. Our janitors and staff work hard to keep our school clean, functional, and comfortable. 

If students want cleaner, more comfortable bathrooms, the solution starts with accountability. Throw away your trash, respect the property, stop drawing on the walls – no matter how important you think your message might be. 

Change does not require a larger school budget or massive renovations. It requires individual decisions made daily by the people who use the space most: the students.

At the end of the day, the state of our bathrooms reflects the standards we are willing to accept, and right now, those standards are way too low.