Have you ever seen it? It happens almost everyday, someone practically sprinting through the halls. They aren’t late – they just need to go to the bathroom.

“It’s the most annoying thing in the world” Junior Connor Givens said.

Most students agree with Givens, and hate the fact that the bathrooms are locked. I know that I agreed with Givens and thought that all the bathrooms should be unlocked considering that we have done nothing wrong as a school to get this odd punishment. Elementary schools have all the bathrooms unlocked, so do all the middle schools, why us? Aren’t we supposed to be the mature young adults getting ready to live out on our own. Why does it seem like we are being treated like kids?

I decided to go right to the top and ask Principal Marker why the bathrooms are locked.

Nine years ago Principal Marker was on staff at another school where, during lunch, a girl was followed to the bathroom and was sexually assaulted.

“When I became principal I swore that nothing like that would ever happen on my watch,” explained Marker.

Later on in my interview with Mr. Marker he explained to me that they couldn’t supervise the bathrooms out of the cafeteria.

“By making the kids come into the cafeteria we can see who goes in and out easily,” said Marker.

Mr. Marker is well aware of the fact that the students are unhappy with the locked bathrooms, and that most students want it to change.

“Nope, not gonna happen, not while I’m here,” Marker said when asked if the bathroom situation would ever change.

Going into this interview with Mr. Marker, I was trying to convince him to start to unlock the bathrooms. I felt that our student body was mature enough to carry out the responsibility of having all of the bathrooms unlocked for the whole day. I wanted to give Mr. Marker a student’s perspective of the situation, how inconvenient it can be to walk all the way from Mrs. Mitchell’s room to the cafeteria bathroom, only to find that it’s full and you have to go all the way to the band hallway bathroom.

Then I heard the real reason of why the bathrooms are locked. And that the high school boy is still in jail, and that the high school girl has to live with that forever. Suddenly I didn’t mind walking the extra distance to go to the bathroom. Mr. Marker cares about his students all of us even if you have never spoken to him, he still protects everyone of us to the best of his ability.

-Tony Bianchini