Students at Oak Park and River Forest High School noticed something different when they returned to school this month. The exterior doors had been removed from most bathrooms at the school as officials work to prevent incidents of vaping and class ditching. Doors on bathroom stalls remain in place.
When the change was announced at the senior class assembly during the first week of school, some seniors reportedly booed.
“Our jaws dropped,” said Ryan Burns, a senior at OPRF. “We were like, that’s crazy. People were booing. They were upset, frustrated.”
Though not much of the bathroom can be seen from the hallways and stall doors remained, the move is concerning to some students.
“I think it’s a little too much,” Burns said. “Me personally, I think there should be privacy.”
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Senior Kingston Petersen agreed.
“I think it’s kind of weird,” Petersen said. “It’s like an invasion of privacy, kind of. It’s like you’re trying to use the bathroom, and some people use it as sort of a safe space to sort of clean themselves up if something happens, and I feel like taking the doors off is kind of like violating a personal bubble that someone might want when they are in the bathroom. I feel like it’s stupid.”
OPRF junior Laila Rosenthal was so upset that she started an online petition at Change.org called We Need Doors. By Monday morning, it had garnered 385 signatures.
Her introduction to the petition stated the removal of the doors disregards the school population’s “basic needs” and “contributes to an atmosphere of anxiety and distress among students.”
“Bathrooms should be a place where students and staff can have a moment of privacy and security, be it to freshen up or perhaps take a breath from a hectic school day,” the petition states.
The school’s single stall, gender-neutral bathrooms still have exterior doors.
Kristen Devitt, the school’s director of Campus Safety, said 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.
“It’s all about being able to identify ways in which we can make the environment less hospitable to rule breaking or law breaking or dangerous behaviors,” Devitt said. “One of the things that’s recommended through this process, this crime prevention through environmental design, is the removal of exterior restroom doors, and there are many schools across the country that have been designed specifically without exterior doors on bathrooms.”
Devitt said bathrooms at OPRF had become a place where students vaped, hid out to ditch classes, fought, gambled and in general did things that they were not supposed to do.
“A lot of times when kids want to do something that is rule violation or a law violation, or just in general get away from the prying eyes of adults, they will go into the restroom thinking they can do whatever it is that they are trying to achieve,” Devitt said. “One of the most frequent comments and complaints that we got last year from parents, faculty, staff and students was ongoing problems in the bathrooms with vaping, both tobacco and marijuana or THC products.
“When we remove those exterior doors we’re taking away the perception that the bathroom is an acceptable place or a safe space to engage in those types of behaviors.”
Devitt said campus safety officers also would also be making more bathroom checks this year.
Not all students think removing the exterior doors is a big deal.
“It doesn’t really affect me too much because there are still doors on the (stalls) and I don’t see why there would be like a huge problem with that,” said junior Tony Pinzari. “I don’t see what the huge problem with it is. People would rather have doors on the bathrooms but I don’t think there is a huge problem with it.”
But some also questioned how effective the move would be in preventing misbehavior such as vaping.
“I think it’s a little odd that they took our doors because I don’t really see a point,” said junior Mia Kamps. “I do think it reduces the amount of vaping and skipping classes in the bathrooms but I have noticed that it has moved to like the gym locker rooms. People just find ways around it; like it’s not really stopping it, it’s just stopped people doing it in the bathroom.”
Bob Skolnik is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.