In an effort to reduce incidents of student vaping, smoking, fighting and gambling, Oak Park and River Forest High School District 200 has removed the exterior doors of most bathrooms, though not all.
For Sabrina Tristano, a student representative on the OPRF school board, it’s not a big deal and the early results seem positive to her. But for others? Well …
“There is a lot to think about for this,” said Tristano, a senior. “I can realize this is a big issue for students, but I don’t see a good reason to put the doors back on.”
Put simply, she said, “people are mad.” But besides the bathroom doors, there are other newly implemented security changes, like scanning IDs in the morning, with hall passes that are now digital.
“All the changes, people are unhappy,” she said. “If it was one at a time it would be better.”
Kristen Devitt, director of campus safety, said the bathroom doors removal started over the summer before the return of students for the fall semester. She also wanted to clear up a misconception in some social media circles that removal included bathroom stall doors, which it did not.
“To be clear, it is the exterior doors in the hallways,” she said. “If the doors were removed, you couldn’t see stalls or urinals from the hallway. There are a handful of restrooms where you could see a stall or a urinal or see through a mirror.”
The change also did not include gender-neutral restrooms, she said, which are single-stall restrooms.
District 200 Supt. Greg Johnson said the move has already paid dividends.
“By removing exterior hallway-facing doors of student restrooms, we have increased our ability to survey the restrooms by sound from the hallway and improved the ability to detect smoke from the hallway as well,” he said.
“Other schools, including Hinsdale South and Central high schools, have found this to be an effective move, and we’ve found that since school has started, the number of complaints about behavioral concerns has greatly reduced compared to last year.”
There was no cost incurred by the district, said Karin Sullivan, district executive director of communications, as door removal was handled by the buildings and ground staff during their day-to-day work.
Devitt said the move makes OPRF a safer school for several reasons.
“Number one, you think about it, vaping and smoking, that’s a public health issue,” she said. “It impacts anyone in the immediate environment. On top of it, (it’s) making sure there are fewer spaces that where it’s okay for other dangerous behaviors (like) physical violence.
“We got a lot of complaints last year from parents and staff and students about problems in the bathrooms. We could have spent $100,000 on sensors but it doesn’t stop the root issue. It notifies us after the issue happens.”
But Devitt said it was also crucial for the district to place laser focus on student privacy.
“We were mindful about that, but we also gave them the alternative of the gender-neutral restrooms. Throughout the school day, I haven’t run into any students who have been asking for other alternatives. We haven’t had any ongoing issues.”
Devitt said the district employed Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, a common approach to safety in schools and other public spaces.
That approach is focused on natural surveillance, to hear, see or smell things that shouldn’t be happening.
“It takes away the perception that this is okay to do, inappropriate things or violate rules, because no one can see or hear us,” Devitt said.
“We want the bathrooms to be a safe place, and we want (students) to have privacy. That’s why we have the stalls and we checked the locks. There are a number of schools that don’t have doors on restrooms. It’s not a new concept.”
Tristano, who found out about the door removal at the end of the summer, thinks it’s a good idea that’s working.
“I think it’s important to try things out and see if it improves,” she said. “Observing it myself, I’ve noticed less commotion in the bathroom. I used to walk in and there were huge groups in there. It’s not really a hangout place anymore.”