Roxane Gama
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.”