Students at Akins were met with several new restrictive policies when starting spring semester, including new limits for bathroom passes.
The new bathroom policy only allows students to have three restroom passes per class per semester. That means students can only go to the bathroom 24 times throughout the semester, not including advisory and lunch.
Only being allowed to use the restroom 24 times a semester is absurd. Some students may have some sort of medical issue and need to use the restroom more often than others, not only that, but girls need to use the restroom more when on their monthly cycle.
Whether or not it is a medical issue or a feminine issue, no student should be limited to how many times they can use the bathroom. Limiting bathroom use will annoy students and cause them to rebel against staff.
Some students have already used their three passes for the entire semester that just started less than a month ago. Are students just supposed to sit there for an hour and thirty minutes and wait for the passing period to use the bathroom once we use up all of our passes?
We hardly have time during the passing period to make it early to class, so using the bathroom would just make us even more late. The bathroom lines have gotten way longer during the passing period ever since this bathroom pass policy was put into place.
An Akins student created an online petition on change.org with a demand to reverse the bathroom pass limits. So far 184 respondents have already signed this petition. It is disappointing to see that students must petition to have more rights to the bathroom but it is also good to see students voicing their anger and concerns towards this new policy.
Teachers are also put in an uncomfortable situation to have to deny students to use the restroom if they don’t have any passes left. Having to deny students something that should be a basic right at school can cause problems in the classroom. Teachers want students to have a comfortable learning environment, but I feel like this new policy is causing a bit of an uncomfortable shift with students. Students don’t want to have to be reminded about the policy and don’t want to have to be talked to about the restroom by their teachers.
While it is understandable why Akins created a stricter bathroom pass system due to students abusing their time with restroom passes, it is unfair to the students who actually would use the bathroom pass appropriately. The entire school should not be punished because of other students’ bad actions.
