By Rylan Oliver
You just got done eating your long awaited lunch so you go to the bathroom to wash your hands. Then the blood in your face drains when you see a sickening sight of boogers smeared against the mirror.
“I had to soak boogers in soap and water then use a scraper to dislodge them off the mirror,” head custodian Mrs. Lisa Baker said, recalling a gross scene from a previous school year.
This is just one of the many distasteful things that Baker and her custodial crew have had to ensure over the years with bathroom vandalism. “Immaturity” is the word that Baker used to describe the “childish acts.” Another example of these actions are tearing off stall doors.
“Knock on wood this semester is going fantastic,” Baker says.
Even though this year is going great we are still feeling the effects of vandalism from previous years. Some restrooms continue to have missing stall doors that have not been replaced after being vandalized in the past.
Baker explained that in past years stall doors have been unsalvageable, requiring them to be on back order. Back order is when you buy a product that is out of stock but will be delivered by a certain date once back in stock.
“The ones upstairs are on order, but if they keep getting ripped off then we will not keep replacing them because they are too expensive,” Baker said.
The school cannot support the destruction forever. Soon there will not be any more chances.
“It really makes me disappointed that we have people that are immature enough to find this funny,” senior James Root said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s popular, it’s stupid.
The common answer to the question why some students vandalize the bathrooms is because they find it funny. Many people find it not so funny, including the principal Ms. Joey Gossett.
Some cases have been taken to the extreme, such as not too long ago “we had a bathroom shut down because it was unsafe due to the toilets being ripped from the concrete wall,” Gossett said.
She said she takes extreme pride in the students at Delta High School. When the reputation of the hard working students is diminished because of faulty behavior she takes it very seriously.
”According to the student handbook, the consequences of vandalism are restitution and up to expulsion,” she said.
“Take pride in your school” is the phrase used by Gossett to encourage the decline of vandalism.
“Students in the past have clogged the drain and left the water on,” Gossett said.
The extent of these offenses goes on, but to Root they are all the same.
“If someone feels the need to go into a bathroom to do anything other than use it, there’s something much bigger about them than what they’re doing,” he said.
