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In an effort to reduce lines and crowding in bathrooms, bathroom mirrors were removed late last semester.
Mirrors were taken down in the girls’ bathrooms and the all- gender bathroom. Even prior to the removal, the boys’ bathrooms had no mirrors.
Since the removal, there have been many mixed reactions, causing the school safety team— consisting of administrative staff, to put a mirror back in the all-gender bathroom in the main building.
According to principal Yavonka Hairston-Truitt, the absence of mirrors is a solution for the meantime.
“There’s all these ideas—it’s really a temporary thing, trial and error,” said Hairston-Truitt.
She said there have been many complaints about bathrooms from parents. Administration has been trying different methods to fix problems related to the bathrooms on campus, Hairston-Truitt said.
“Data shows one of the biggest problems that arose in bathrooms are the kids that are in the way because they’re blocking the mirror,” she said. “So what we said is ‘Let’s take them down.’”
The data Hairston-Truitt is referring to is administrative staff having campus aides average the amount of students in line and tally the progress. According to Hairston-Truitt, the data is “quantitative.”
There have been issues with bathroom lines and usage for a while.
“It’s been problematic since before this year, so when I became principal, one of the things I did to address bathrooms was hire more campus support,” she said.
Hairston-Truitt said bathrooms can’t be open without campus support for safety reasons.
“[Campus support] always felt like the amount of time a person can die is the amount of time you should have been right back. So that’s about every 15 minutes,” she said.
Sophomore Mel Holtzman thinks that even if mirrors aren’t in bathrooms, they can still have them around campus.
“I think we should have mirrors in some hallways, that way it’s not causing crowding in the bathrooms,” she said.
Campus aide Hoda Makkar has been working at Venice for 16 years and thinks the mirror removal has shortened lines.
“The young ladies will use the restroom and come back out because there’s no mirror,” she said.
Though she’s noticed a reduction in lines, she believes there should be mirrors in the bathrooms.
“I always think that young ladies should look at themselves because it represents, to me, self-love.”
Concerned Student • Feb 21, 2024 at 9:23 AM
The problem with the mirror in the all gender restroom was that it was in the narrow hallway part, not in front of the sinks like a normal bathroom is. People would congregate and do their makeup, film videos etc. right in front of the door, which would block it. The real problem is that not enough bathrooms are open so they get crowded during breaks and passing periods. It’s not like they don’t all work, but instead, an admin needs to be stationed at one at all times. If you treat people like animals, they’re gonna act like animals. If you close all but 1-2 bathrooms for each gender, they are gonna end up piling into the readily available gender-neutral bathroom in the center of campus. It’s not rocket science, guys. These issues are a result of poor planning and gross mismanagement on the part of the school administration, not bad behavior.
Nick • Feb 19, 2024 at 11:07 AM
If the lines for the bathrooms are such a problem that they need to remove the mirrors, why don’t they open all the bathrooms?
It’s such a simple solution. No one’s going to die if there isn’t a campus aide standing outside the bathroom.
Not only that, they have enough aides to stand outside all the bathrooms. They do it all the time.
Multiple Students • Feb 16, 2024 at 6:20 PM
Maybe if they opened all of the bathrooms that would fix the line issues. I mean, seriously, removing the mirrors instead of opening the far west or far east bathrooms is solution that’s so far-removed from the problem.