By Kara Parker

Staff Writer

The R.J. Reynolds High School bathrooms are a never-ending struggle. Whether it’s how crowded they are or how there never seems to be supplies of toilet paper, paper towels, or soap, it’s a hassle to take care of a person’s basic human needs. 

    As the school year kicks off, so do the jam-packed bathrooms I’ve come to associate with RJR. It’s a matter of luck as to whether or not you can take a visit to the bathroom in between classes. This is a difficult reality for me to accept, as someone who would rather not miss class time for something that could easily be taken care of during class change. 

     I’ve even gotten to a point where I never even try to use the second-floor bathroom. I don’t even check to see if I can, I just go ahead to the third-floor bathroom. The major problem with the second-floor bathroom is largely the crowds of people that mingle there. Would you want to use a bathroom that you have to push your way past throngs of people just to get to a stall? It’s like being in a can of sardines. It’s a harsh reality when the main issue standing in your way of being able to use the bathroom is a large crowd of people. It makes me wonder, is there nowhere else for them to be? Not to mention just chilling in the bathroom is pretty gross. They just hang out in the bathroom vaping for an entire class change, leaving the rest of us without any way to use the bathroom. 

    “Not everybody’s going in there to use the bathroom…and I know this sounds corny, but it all kind of comes down to not being Reynolds Ready,” Assistant Principal Angie Bowman said. “You’re supposed to be taking care of your business when you’re supposed to take care of it.”

     On the other hand, if you’re desperate and choose to shove through the masses, you might find that every stall has no toilet paper, leaving you to return to class with no success. If by chance you find an empty stall with toilet paper, you might be able to complete the first part of your mission, but there’s still more to be done, like washing your hands. 

    The obstacles standing in your way: the girls crowding in front of the mirror and the lack of soap. The former is easier to avoid; typically, you’re bound to find at least one person who’s willing to move while you wash your hands, but you have to have the courage to ask. 

    The most difficult of these problems is the matter of whether or not there will be soap available. The worst-case scenario is when there hasn’t been soap in a bathroom for a couple of days. One would think that it would be refilled eventually, but you try to wash your hands, and nope, there is still no soap. It’s one thing to deal with these problems once, but when they occur repeatedly, it gets to a point where you wish someone would make a change.

    The final task in one’s bathroom mission is to dry your hands. Simple enough, until there aren’t paper towels. Coming from someone who consistently finds bathrooms lacking in paper towels, it’s one of the things that continues to bother me. Should I really be expected to dry my hands on my pants or shirt and walk around with wet clothes clinging to me? I don’t think that should be the expectation, but here we are with empty paper towel dispensers, sometimes for days at a time. 

    “Sometimes the bathroom resources are depleted by shenanigans as opposed to the way we should actually use our bathroom resources,” Bowman said. 

    This means, on the worst days, you can’t even enter the bathroom, and on some of the better days, you might leave with wet hands and clothes. What could be done? I believe that this doesn’t have to be the reality if the proper actions are taken. 

   Students could spend their class changes elsewhere, or actually take advantage of the fact that they’re in the bathroom and use it for its proper uses. On the other hand, one way the issue of lacking supplies could be improved might be through more consistent and constant checking of these supplies in bathrooms. However, if this is the case because of a lack of funding for these supplies to be provided, I don’t believe that there is adequate funding for schools. Is it really acceptable for students to exist for 8 hours in a space without proper supplies to take care of their needs? I don’t think so.