OAK PARK, Ill. (WGN) – A Chicago-area high school has been creating a bit of a stir online with a unique solution to stop unwanted behavior in their bathrooms.
Oak Park and River Forest High School (OPRF) has removed the exterior doors to the school bathrooms.
The decision comes after several complaints were made last year about unwanted activity in the restrooms.
The lack of exterior doors aims to help prevent congregating in the bathroom, as well as alleged vaping and smoking by students. There was initial concern that the doors to the bathroom stalls were being removed, but those will remain in place.
No doors were removed in cases where bathroom stalls, urinals or even mirrors could be seen from the entryway. Nexstar’s WGN was told there are also single-stall gender neutral bathrooms on each floor, with the exterior doors still intact.
The OPRF director of campus safety told WGN the move is already making an impact, as fewer complaints regarding bathroom behavior are being filed.
The school released the following statement on the decision:
The decision to remove the exterior doors of most bathrooms at the school was based on an evidence-based practice in architecture called crime prevention through environmental design or CPTED. One of the most frequent complaints that we received last year from parents, faculty, staff, and students was about inappropriate activities taking place in the bathrooms, such as vaping, skipping class, fighting, and so forth.
The exterior doors were removed only from bathrooms where doing so did not provide a direct line of sight into the area where stalls or urinals are located. None of the stall doors were removed. The bathroom entrances now function similarly to those you see at airports, many schools, and other public places where the bathrooms do not have entrance doors.
This is only our third week of school, but our Campus Safety staff report fewer crowds of students are congregating in the bathrooms now.
However, not everyone is in support of the move.
An online petition aims to get the doors back on their hinges. OPRF junior Laila Rosenthal started the petition, which has just under 400 signatures.
According to Rosenthal, it’s not just a privacy issue, but a safety one as well. She also added that if vaping and smoking were the problems, the school could have resorted to other measures.
“That has been a problem at OPRH, but it’s not a major problem and it’s not to the extent where the doors need to be taken off of the bathrooms, and there’s also other measures that could have been taken to prevent vaping in bathrooms, such as smoke detectors, vape detectors and just other things you could do,” Rosenthal said. “Another thing, at least that I’m worried about, is with school shootings and stuff, if a student is just roaming in the hallway, they can’t go back to their classroom. The door is locked. They go to the bathrooms to try to find safety, and there’s no doors, like I just feel like it’s just so dangerous.”
Rosenthal said that as soon as the petition reaches 500 signatures, she plans to take it to the school council and to the dean.
The post Why some bathroom doors have been removed in an Illinois high school appeared first on WHNT.
