New bathroom policy enforced
Newbury Park High School has enforced a new and stricter bathroom policy that went into effect Jan. 21, 2020.
The new policy requires students to pick up a pink paper slip that records the student’s time in and out of the classroom. Additionally, a teacher’s signature is needed, as well as the signature of the campus supervisor outside the restroom. During breaks, bathrooms in every building are open as usual, but during class, only the D building bathroom remains open, and the campus supervisor can only allow one student in the restroom at a time.
These new restrictions regarding the restrooms were put into place by the NPHS leadership team and administration, whose meetings are led by Steve Lepire, Principal of NPHS. “There are people who have taken advantage of the ability to use the restrooms, and so we wanted to maybe monitor it a little bit more,” Lepire said.
The bathroom policy was enforced to prevent students meeting during class time and to monitor how many students use the restroom as a whole. “All of a sudden friends will show up from different classrooms at the same time because they probably text each other and said, ‘Hey, I’m using the restroom, I’ll meet you there,’” Lepire said.
The student use of drugs and vaping products in the restroom was another contributing factor to the establishment of the policy: “I assume this policy is being enforced due to vandalism, vaping and fights,” Bryanna Gregory, junior, said.
There has been a significant uproar from the student body in response to the policy and some believe that the closing of all but one restroom on campus and the allowance of only one student at a time will cause long lines. “There will be more time wasted outside of class,” Ethan Belkin, sophomore, said.
Gregory and Belkin both predict that the new policy will have a greater effect on the female student body. “The policy of allowing only one person in the restroom at a time is particularly unfair to female students on campus, at least from personal experience,” Gregory said.
However, in response, Lepire stated that the rule of one student per restroom is merely a guideline, “I call them general guidelines in the sense of just kind of giving discretion for the campus supervisors and teachers in general,” Lepire said.
Due to the bathroom policy’s unfamiliar rules, many students are hesitant to accept it. “From what I have heard from other people, nobody that I have talked to likes this policy at all. I don’t know any student in support of it,” Belkin said.
However, despite the fact that the restroom policy is met with a lot of criticism from the student body, NPHS will continue to enforce it. “We are gonna wait and see to find out (if it results beneficially)…new is always different,” Lepire said.
