Bathrooms Are A Popular And Safe Place To Express Feelings

For most girls here at Highland, going to the restrooms has become an activity comparable to reading the diary of an angsty middle schooler: scrawled in neat and messy handwriting alike, the barriers of the stalls in the restrooms are littered in messages that some students apparently thought were important enough to put in ink.

As an upperclassman, I don’t only find this annoying, but sometimes I find myself gawking at the nonsensical memos left behind by anonymous bathroom-goers. It seems that many kids feel the need to express themselves by means of defacing school property. Not only that, but the words they leave behind range from song lyrics that would have been better left in one’s head, to vulgar and offensive remarks about peers.

Initially, I wanted to write an article highlighting how many students used the bathroom walls as a way to bully others, but after observing the changing messages on the familiar walls, I began to see more complex characteristics in the writing in the girls’ restroom.

“I came here to ditch”

First, I’d like to discuss the silly nonsensical stuff found written on the walls, and “I came here to ditch” is by far the most aggravating one. Not only is the writer sluffing class, they are defacing property down the hallway to pass the time. I understand how it feels to have every bone in your body aching to not go to class, but I also know how fulfilling it feels when you go play your part in the walls of the classroom. Trust me, it’s worth the effort.

“I personally think it’s pointless,” senior, Natalia Trofimov said. “You clearly have nothing to do, why would you want to write on school walls?” Like Natalia, I find these written remarks aimless and counterproductive to our school image.

What really baffles me, though, is the fact that students write on the walls not thinking of the effect its going to have on others. Those words are so simple to read, so small and comprehendible. What if during elementary school field trips to Highland’s annual musicals a young mind read those words? What does the administration think when they read these things? “I came here to ditch” has been written in several different bathrooms throughout the school, and it might as well say, “I’m not doing my best” which is not the Highland way.

“Sometimes I feel like dying”

Yes, really, some students at Highland suffer from severe depression, and some express their hidden emotions by means of scrawling out their painful stories on the walls of the room in which they all too often find themselves crying over temporary struggles. Seeing this type of writing strikes a particular chord in my heart, because what I see when I read these messages is someone trying to ask for help in the wrong way.

Trofimov suggested that the school make the Suicide Hotline number available in areas of the school that students may go to in order to seek haven, like the restrooms or the counselor’s office.

Expressing your emotions through writing is an amazing way to cope with issues, no doubt about that, but the walls of the bathrooms at Highland are not the place. There are counselors here at school in the event a student needs someone they can trust and talk to. I encourage any and all students that have written things like this to reach out to a friend or trusted adult, because depression is a serious issue, but not a hopeless one.

“You are beautiful!”

Messages of encouragement and validation can also be found in the restrooms. I believe these inspiring notes go hand in hand with the last type of messages, as a sort of reminder to the students here with depression and anxiety issues that they are amazing people and can do whatever they set their mind to. As much as I am against pointless vandalism to school property, these little memos do bring a smile to my face. I hope that anyone sad enough to write about their emotional decline on the restroom walls has seen these responses and taken them as the truth, because they are.

“You are beautiful!” and “Life will get better” are just a couple of the cute little reminders I’ve seen throughout this school year alone pop up on the walls, just to get washed off again not even a week later, and I assure every lady at Highland High School that these words hold a ridiculous amount of truth.

Junior Grecia Danae recounted one of her experiences at Highland when she went to the restroom and found one of these uplifting messages. “Once, I was having the worst day ever and I went into a bathroom stall and one of the comments said something along the lines of When life gets you down it’s because the best is on the way, and I just burst into tears because that’s exactly what I needed.”

Danae said that the cheesy messages left behind in the restrooms bring a smile to her face as well, and that they tend to leave her in a better mood.

But… (there’s always a but) the school bathroom is not the place to encourage your peers! I really hope that students can start to reach out to each other in times of need, because after observing the messages left up in the restrooms lately I’ve come to realize that there are two types of people: people who need help, and people who are willing to give help. The sooner the student body realizes this the better, so we can start working towards having a happier and healthier school. “[INSERT VULGAR COMMENTS ABOUT PEER]”

Last but not least, there’s the people that go into the restroom armed with a pen and the intention to anonymously bruise someone else’s self-esteem. Ouch. This kind of writing is simply pathetic. Students should not be harassed in any form at school, and the fact that students think it’s okay to go in the restroom and write demeaning things about their peers is disgusting.

As seen above, there are students at our school that already have low self-esteem, and writing nasty things about people only lowers our school moral.

Not only is this a form of bullying, I would define it as one of the lowest forms of bullying, because the person attacking their peer is remaining completely anonymous. I’m not the only one that thinks negatively of this anonymous tyranny either.

“Highland is a pretty welcoming school, and bullying in general should not exist. It is cowardly to do it in the bathroom stalls,” Trofimov said. Danae mentioned that when she came to Highland she, “was astonished at how rude people are towards others.”

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times, the restrooms our school are not the place to write nasty things about others.

What Can We Do?

As you can see, there’s a vandalism problem at Highland, and in order for it to be taken care of, the students need to take it into their own hands to find the responsibility not to sabotage the beige walls in the bathrooms. So how can we do that?

Trofimov suggests that “the school creates an online anonymous message board.” She believes that it would get the graffiti off the walls and “wouldn’t use custodian’s time to cleaning it up”

Danae, however, said she feels “like our school should have an area where everyone can express themselves freely (without vulgarity). A place where we could write all the positive things on a wall in order to express ourselves.”

Whatever we do, we need to make a change in our behavior, because the walls of the restroom have become utterly littered with self-expression.