As renovation has expanded, and the school space has increased, many of the new bathrooms have been locked. These closures have forced many students to turn to less bathrooms which has increased crowding.

Oakton’s safety and security expert, Scott Giambattista, states that the cause of these recent locks are due to the schools inability to watch all of the new bathrooms. “We simply can not monitor all of the bathrooms with the volume of our security team,” Giambattista says. Furthermore, this necessity to close these bathrooms has been furthered by increasing trends of vandalism – incidents where faucets and soap dispensers being stolen have been reported – and increasing cases of students caught vaping. 

This trend will likely continue until the end of this year, however next year, when even more renovation will have been finished, is still hard to tell.

photo courtesy of Thomas Hunter