Bathroom Misuse Ruining Bathroom Breaks

By: Nyla Chambliss

April 8, 2025

   Every student knows the feeling when you ask to go to the bathroom and your teacher says, “Somebody is in the bathroom, and you have to wait.” You wait and wait, only to realize that the person in the bathroom is not going to come back until the last 10 minutes of class. Instead of going to the bathroom, they’re in the bathroom socializing or on their phone. This is an issue, even though we have a cell phone policy. The students no longer put their phones up, which is another problem. 

   According to Prince William County School Board, the bathroom policy is only one student at a time to prevent bathroom misuse. We also have a 10-10 rule, which is where students can’t leave the classroom during the first 10 minutes and the last 10 minutes of class. As well, if you go to the bathroom, you can only be in there for 10 minutes. Even though those sound like good policies, students abuse them, which makes the system unfair. If the school board wants to prevent bathroom misuse, they should focus on the students who are not following the policies instead of making everybody suffer. The school board thinks that the best way to solve the problem is to limit how many people can go to the bathroom at once, but all this does is make the students who actually need to go to the bathroom uncomfortable if the student in the bathroom is not following the 10-10 rule. 

   The real solution for bathroom misuse at school is accountability. If some students are misusing their time out of class, then those students should be held responsible instead of making everybody wait. Teachers should use other alternatives, like timing every student. Last year, we used a system called E-HallPass, but we can no longer use that since we’re not allowed to have our phones. Instead, maybe the teachers can have stopwatches to time the students or simply just look at the clock so they can see when students have been out of class for longer than the allocated 10 minutes. 

   Using the bathroom is a necessity, not a reward, and having students wait to use the bathroom because another person is taking too long is unfair. It’s time for the school board to make some changes.