There aren’t many things that the Springbrook faculty and student body agree on, but it is unanimously agreed that something must be done when it comes to bathroom sanitation. Many people have walked into the bathroom and have seen the floors covered with urine, sinks not working, and the paper towel dispensers empty.

What is the cause of this problem? The easy solution would be to blame building service, but the cause goes much deeper than that.

    “It all comes down to the students. No matter how many times we (building service) clean the bathroom a day, the bathrooms are still going to get dirty because the kids don’t respect them,” said Building Service Manager Robert Carter.

Carter shared many stories of blatant disrespect and vandalism, evidence that some students in Springbrook just do not care about how the bathrooms look. For example, some students dump all of their lunch trash in the toilet, when there is a trashcan just a few feet away. Building service cleans the bathrooms multiple times a day and is constantly refilling paper towels and toilet paper, but it is impossible for five people to keep up with 1600 students.

    “I remember one time last year when I walked in the bathroom and there was pee and poop all over the floor, and when I went into a stall to do my business, I looked down and saw a swarm of roaches crawling near my feet,” recalled Matthew Granger.

The other aspect to the foul bathroom conditions is vandalism. Visitors to the bathroom stalls, probably have seen seen graffiti on the walls of the stalls. Much of the graffiti is profane and vulgar.

“Cleaning up the graffiti in the bathrooms doesn’t help. One time, I painted over the stalls in one bathroom. When I came back 10 minutes later, someone had already written on the stall, thanking me for a clean canvas,” said Carter discouragingly.

One reason why graffiti is so prominent is because the punishment is so light. If a student in Montgomery County gets caught graffitiing on school property, they only have to clean it up. But if a student in Howard County gets caught doing the same offense, they can get suspended for destruction of property. This rule, paired with students who do not respect school property, led to the high number of vandalism incidents in the Springbrook bathrooms.

If we want to have clean bathrooms here at Springbrook, the only people who can make this happen are the students. Building service workers are doing their job, but we must pull our own weight by doing simple things like throwing away trash and not writing on the walls.