Urinary Urgency: Students Grapple with Closed Bathrooms

I’m sure you’ve been in this scenario – you want to use the bathroom before/after class, and you come to find that dreaded sign: “Boys/Girls Bathroom Closed, go to locker room, Thank you!” 

So you go to class, full bladder and all. You wait the 5 minutes, and go to the nearest bathroom. Alas, the bathroom is still closed. You go to the locker room bathroom, and it’s locked, too! By now, you have two options: A) Throw away your shame and relieve yourself right then and there (not an option), or B) Suffer for the rest of the period, even though it’s likely that the scenario I just described will repeat itself.

Have you ever really stopped to think about the bathroom policy at New Rochelle High School? Sure, you could argue that the bathroom schedule prevents foot traffic, or that it stops kids from using the bathroom for the wrong purpose, like to skip class, for example. This is all true. But what about the kids who just can’t hold it anymore? 

J. Leon, a Junior at New Rochelle High School, recalls the boys' locker room bathroom being blocked off by trash cans to stop students from entering on Monday, October 20th, 2025. Also, on October 23, 2025, during 8th period, Boris Wright, a sophomore at New Rochelle High School, tried to go to the bathroom and came to find that none of the bathrooms in any of the houses were open, which means that all the boys' bathrooms were closed at once.  He said that he thinks it should be open for longer periods of time. M. Edwards, a sophomore at New Rochelle High, said that “the bathroom isn’t open most of the day anyway”. 

J. Moreno, a sophomore at New Rochelle High School, believes that the entire policy should be removed. “It’s better to use the bathroom before class, so you don’t lose time which could’ve been used to do something more productive,” he said. "There are also the endless lines in front of the bathroom before it opens, full of children who need to use the bathroom after it’s been locked for a while, and these students end up losing valuable class time when all they want to do is use the bathroom."

“It creates a huge inconvenience,” said Izabella Inniss, also a sophomore at New Rochelle High.