Opinion: A Lack of Bathrooms
Media by Neelansh Bute
Pictured is the A-wing men’s restroom. MHS maintains a ratio of 323 students to 1 restroom.
Marquette is the third most populated school in Missouri with approximately 2,263 students and 136 full-time teachers.
This is a problem.
In the entire school, there are seven student bathrooms and four faculty bathrooms. I can’t speak for the faculty, but last year I never saw less than about seven people in a bathroom at once. Most people I asked said that there were not enough bathrooms at MHS, and for good reason.
To put things into perspective, we need to look at the ratio of students to bathrooms at Marquette. With the figures above, the ratios seem to be 323:1 for students and 34:1 for faculty and staff. And considering that each year MHS increases the size of the student body, this figure can only go up. Eventually, these bathrooms could see more than 10 people in them at once. With only six minutes for bell periods, this seems pretty daunting.
But there was a potential for there to be more bathrooms added with the STEM wing. And yet, that didn’t happen. Nor did it happen when the Library was expanded.
Principal Carl Hudson oversees facilities at MHS. He said that no bathrooms were added in the STEM wing due to the limited budget.
“There is a ratio used in construction for size of a building [and] size of the population as to how many bathrooms should be in a building, “ he said.
In the past, the district has used bills, such as Proposition Thrive which passed a few months back, to adapt to the increasing school attendance numbers. If these bills start failing, redistricting won’t help the class size.
If the district does not add more bathrooms at MHS, the lines to the bathrooms may be out the door in a few short years. This may not happen soon, but when it does, it will affect the hallways, which are already bad. Adding bathrooms would not only make them less crowded, but also possibly encourage people to use them during passing periods instead of missing class. As it stands, there are not enough to guarantee using the bathroom during this time is a safe option.
This is one problem not using the bathroom won’t fix.
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Robin Karst, senior, is the Online Publisher for MHSNews. This school year, Robin is also the head of documentation for the Marquette Luxons robotics team....
Neelansh will be spending his senior year as the Online Editor in Chief of the Marquette Messenger. He joined newspaper because of a passion for writing...