Can we Stall Any Longer?

To students around campus, LHS bathrooms are “dirty,” “gross and unorganized,” “the most disgusting bathrooms that you can think of.” One student in particular remarked on the bathrooms as, “the single most horrific, disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.” Freshman Izaiah Kaleikini calls the bathrooms “disgusting,” and insists “I don't want to use the bathrooms here. And I bet some people actually don’t use the bathrooms here at all.”

Other students mention broken locks on the stall doors that prevent privacy, unflushed toilets, trash on the floor and in the sinks—graffiti all over walls, missing toilet paper, and empty soap dispensers. While custodians do clean the bathrooms regularly, constant use by hundreds of students each day makes it hard to keep up.

“Students should have clean facilities to use,” says freshman Ashlee Hufalar about bathrooms on campus. “They should feel that they’re not in an unsanitary place--just the reassurance that they won’t get, like, any germs or something.”

Students are upset with the bathrooms and looking for change. But a student from 60 years ago says this is not how it used to be.

“our bathrooms were clean”

Sandra Braun-Ortega graduated from Lahainaluna’s class of 1964. She remembers that “our bathrooms were clean, reasonably clean. And all the stalls weren’t dirty.”

But that was 60 years ago. In fact, part of being the oldest high school campus “west of the Rockies” is that many of our facilities are 20-30 years old.

According to Vice Principal Christopher Webber, some buildings are even older. “We have older buildings like I-building. That building is probably 40 or 50 years old and the bathrooms haven’t necessarily been updated.”

Our facilities are now old, but in the 60s, said Braun-Ortega, it was also easier to keep things clean. “If you had detention,” she said, “one of the things they (the school) would make you do is clean the bathrooms.”

Mr. Webber says that this wouldn’t be an option now. “The state has decreed that that’s unfair and we can’t have students working, certainly without pay, but also if they’re underage. It’s seen as draconian if that were to take place.”

Despite this, sophomore Alexa Garcia sometimes feels like she should do her part as a student and “clean it up a bit, but like, I can’t really do much either way, but just tell other people as well, like, don’t make a mess--it could just be cleaner.”

Another freshman who chose to remain anonymous went so far as to say the school should cut its losses and build new bathrooms. “Burn it down, make sure there is zero existence of it and make a new one, cause you cannot save that bathroom. It’s gone. It’s so, so far gone.

The Good, the Bad, and the Smelly

“It smells like butt,” said one sophomore while he ranked all the campus bathrooms 1 to 11. His comment was a reference to G building which he ranked a 7. Although it is a new building, the boy’s room apparently already has a weird smell.

Despite this, G-building has one of the best bathrooms with clean floors, toilets, sinks and doesn’t lack any necessary toiletries.

In the final rankings, G building scored higher than 7. Generally, the scores revealed how both the girls and boys agree that R-building has the worst bathroom while G-building has the best.

 1 (Bad) – 11 (Good)

R-building, or the AG building, got its ranking because of how the floors are dirty. The sinks have ants crawling out of them. The toilets look too unsanitary to use. “That one is so bad. Oh that one’s terrible. Stuff all over the ground,” said one student completing the survey.

“Everybody”

Students understand that the causes for the state of campus bathrooms may be split between students and the school.

Sophomore Shalom Rios observes that the school “doesn’t really deep clean it.” But also, she feels that “we, like, make it dirty and we don't do anything about it either…sometimes, like there’s people that don’t flush the toilet or they just leave stuff in the sink or they just don’t clean up their trash.”

Webber agrees that “everybody” is responsible for the state of the bathrooms. “I think the students and the staff that use them, the custodians, the people that clean them.” Yet, he noted especially that students add significantly to the problem by defacing them with graffiti and writing.

A junior, who wanted to be anonymous, agrees that students may be most responsible for the problem. The bathrooms are unsanitary, they said, “mainly because of the students who vandalize the bathrooms and like, destroy them. And also, I don't know. This campus is just not clean.”

Junior Jowy Langaman thinks that student vandals are not concerned about how others feel. “The students just don't really care about it,” he said.

“An endless box of money”

Freshman Ashlee Hufalar thinks that “the school doesn’t have enough maintenance for the bathrooms and it’s not like cleaned as much.”

Recently, according to Mr. Webber, there has been a shortage of custodians so some of the bathrooms have had to be closed. There is also the issue of vaping that occurs in the bathrooms. Students go to the bathroom and do all sorts of things from vandalism, to skipping class, to doing illegal activities such as vaping. This creates an uncomfortable environment where students don’t feel safe and clean.

Vice Principal Webber explained that “If something’s vandalized then we do fix it. But we don’t have any plans right now to do major bathroom overhaul in terms of getting new facilities like sinks or toilets.”

The school’s budget is stretched thin, however. More important expenses such as teacher salaries, textbooks, sports, events like dances and assemblies take priority over renovating the bathrooms.

“If I had an endless box of money I found next to the road,” said Webber, “I would want to change some of the sinks in a few bathrooms and some of the tile work in need of attention.”

Webber had sympathy for students. “Bathrooms should be clean,” he said. “They should be sanitary because that is not only what the students deserve, but I believe it’s something that has to happen because we don’t want to have students use a restroom that’s not clean or hygienic.”

“Is that what they think of you...”

If he could fix this, freshman Izaiah Kaleikini said he would “change the whole restroom so it would be all fixed. Like the toilets, the sinks, clean floors instead of mud and dirt—rearrange it and everything.”

Rios would “make it cleaner because sometimes there’s people that don’t even wanna go to the bathrooms because they get disgusted.”

Fewer students talked about the bathroom locks. One junior, for instance, said she would “change the locks on the bathroom in the stalls because they’re all broken and literally, like in one of the bathrooms, my friend literally has to hold the door close for me. And also, we need toilet paper because there’s no toilet paper in any of the bathrooms right now.”

A freshman who wanted to remain anonymous pointed to another problem: vaping. “Everytime I walk in,” they said. “It’s like smoke clouds.”

Mr. Webber talked about this, saying “We obviously can’t put restroom cameras in restrooms, that’s illegal.” But he was also “concerned about the amount of vaping that I’m told goes on in some restrooms. I’m trying to get on top of that as well.”

Braun-Ortega couldn’t believe that the school was letting students use bathrooms in such a poor state. “If they let you guys use those kinds of dirty bathrooms,” she said, “is that what they think of you, you know? Since you're just high school, you don't matter? That’s what it sounds like to me.”