Image source: James King

By James King, Editorial Editor, and Nicholas Cosgrove, Photography & Backpage Editor

Bathrooms are a private place for most people. It is generally understood that it is important to have the doors to bathrooms closed to ensure this privacy. So why are Hammond’s bathroom doors wide open? According to the administration, it was to reduce the amount of students that congregate near or around the bathrooms. Although the bathrooms are open for these reasons, we at the Bear Press ask if it’s really a necessary policy decision. 

In our opinion, these policies are unneeded. The doors being open violates the privacy of bathrooms. It’s weird to be able to look at the bathrooms and see inside. Some bathrooms in the school have walls which divide the bathroom and block people from looking inside. These walls are useful, but it still does not change how weird the situation is. A lot of the bathrooms at Hammond do not have these dividers.

We interviewed several Hammond students about their opinions on the situation. When asked about his opinion on the reasons given by the school administration on why the doors were closed, Thomas, a junior at Hammond, said, “We all know what they meant was smoking, and it didn’t fix that problem at all. It feels like they’re just doing performative policies to make it look like they are doing something but in reality they do nothing.” Another student when asked the same question responded by saying, “I think that it’s ineffective, instead of letting people hotbox in the bathroom it creates communal hallway smoke sessions. However, I do like it better because I would rather be able to use the restroom than them being locked.” In most interviews that we had conducted, students mentioned a concern about drug use within the school. All of them stated that these new policies did not affect the use of drugs in any way.

On our Instagram account (@hhsbearpress) we posted a survey. The survey asked “do you like that the bathroom doors are open?” About 14% of people who answered the survey said that yes, they did want them open. About 86% said no, they did not like them being open.. From this poll, we were able to deduce that a majority of the Hammond population disagree with the open bathroom door policies that have been emplaced. In another question we asked, “How do you feel about the bathroom doors being kept open?” Students gave responses describing how they felt unsafe or uncomfortable with the lack of privacy the school was giving. Responses like these are concerning and should be considered by the administrators for the policies removal.

Students at Hammond have tried taking action into their own hands. On Instagram, there is an account called @hahs.behindcloseddoors that is dedicated to the cause of trying to get the bathroom doors closed. They posed a survey on their account which gathers more information about people who support the closing of the bathroom doors and their experiences with the new situation regarding these bathrooms. Students making accounts like this and spreading awareness about the current situation with the bathrooms shows how passionate people are about the removal of the policy. 

While we do disagree with the closing of the bathroom doors, we do understand the reasons for which these policies were put in place by the administration. People gathering around the bathrooms can be a big obstacle when trying to navigate throughout the school. To prevent this we instead would like to propose that if the doors are to stay open, that dividers or walls be put up to block the vision into the bathrooms. This gives the students some privacy while still adhering to the administrators wanting the doors to stay open.