Students at Pa. school must ask for toilet paper

[The Straight Story]

Students at Pa. school must ask for toilet paper


MAHANOY CITY, Pa. (AP) — An eastern Pennsylvania high school says vandalism forced it to create a policy in which toilet paper has been taken out of the boys' bathrooms.

Boys at Mahanoy Area High School now must go to the school office to request toilet paper and sign it out. Principal Thomas Smith says that's helped solve a major problem of intentionally clogging toilets that's been going on for two years.

Smith says boys must sign out the toilet paper and then sign it back in. But the Republican-Herald of Pottsville reports (http://bit.ly/X3shAR ) some parents are protesting the policy.

Parent Karen Yedsena says some students are too embarrassed to go to the office to get toilet paper and are going home sick instead. School officials say they aren't aware of any such problems.

http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/apexchange/2013/01/28/us--toilet-paper-by-request.html

[loli phabay]

1. my kids would have a roll in their bag.

[pipi_k]

4. Mine too, or at least

one of those pocket sized packs of Kleenex tissues

[Cirque du So-What]

5. Mine too

No child of mine would have to face the prospect of embarrassment arising from this draconian policy.

[cleanhippie]

11. It is an extreme measure.

How would you have gone about solving the problem of the clogged toilets by vandals?

[Mosby]

13. Simple, CCTV

Problem solved.

[cleanhippie]

15. You're joking, right?

Signing out a roll of TP from the office is too extreme, but putting cameras in the bathrooms is acceptable?

[Mosby]

23. yes, I'm kidding. nt

[cleanhippie]

24. Whew! I thought so, but one can never really be sure.

Thanks for clarifying.

[Mosby]

25. I bet this is just one kid

maybe a bathroom monitor for a week or two could have put an end to this.

[WinkyDink]

28. Doubtful. My uncle's time as a school custodian was Hell on Earth.

[Cirque du So-What]

18. I can tell you this much

I would not 'reward' the vandals by giving them the satisfaction of knowing they created a situation that affects everyone else and may be a source of embarrassment to some - a situation that provides proof that they have the power to influence the very same authority figures they're trying to anger & frustrate in the first place. In that sense, the admins are definitely 'feeding the trolls.'

Short of installing video-recording devices OVER every single shitter stall, I can't think of a foolproof method of thwarting a determined vandal. IMO the school would be time, money & effort ahead by just unplugging the shitters without making a 'federal case' out of it. Now they're faced with the likelihood that the shitters will be plugged with all manner of materials that will be much more difficult to clear than mere TP.

[cleanhippie]

20. While I can see how that would be an ordinary reaction...

The article states that since removing the TP, there have been no incidents of that kind of vandalism.

[Cirque du So-What]

21. So far

Give it a little more time.

[kooljerk666]

2. Not a square to spare...................../nt

[Cirque du So-What]

3. This policy is particularly odious (no pun intended)

What if a student runs this embarrassing gauntlet, only to find that there's a greater need than originally anticipated? Wait in the stall and hope that someone comes along who is generous enough to 'spare a square?' Besides, I can think of at least a dozen ways in which jokesters can circumvent and even surpass this draconian measure.

[pipi_k]

7. They never stop to think

of how some enterprising and persistent kid might outsmart them

Like flushing notebook paper down the toilets instead of TP.

Or the entire gym class's dirty sweatsocks.

This sort of thing never ceases to amaze me. We were all teenagers once. How and when do adults manage to forget how creative kids can be when they want to commit mayhem?

[Cirque du So-What]

6. Just saw this...

...boys must sign out the toilet paper and then sign it back in.

Public-health authorities should be alerted to this potentially hazardous practice.

[pipi_k]

8. I know...

Do they really think no pissed off kid is going to wipe a bit of poo on the inside of the roll?

An unsuspecting person might put his fingers inside the roll to carry it (I often do this) and pick up some nasty germs.

[WinkyDink]

29. INDEED!! There's a REASON the roll is normally shielded except for the end!

[davsand]

9. Sounds like a Principal who backed himself into a corner.

According to the article the kids have been plugging up the toilets for the last couple years. I'll spare us all the jokes about an improved diet, and assume that it was an intentional act for the purpose of this discussion...

Sooner or later I can see how this would need to be addressed. Given my overall lack of esteem for some of the school administrators I've run into over the years, I gotta say that I think this was probably a situation where some guy was hip deep in a flooded boy's bathroom and he said "ENOUGH!" The proclamation was issued and the line was drawn in the sand.

I can see how it'd be difficult to have a "potty monitor" and I can also see how making them sign for the toilet paper would make sense to a pissed off adult in the middle of it all. By the time they had any chance to stop and think it through it was too late to do anything else.


Now that they have had "parent outcry" they can all save face by coming to some kind of "agreement" that will curtail the vandals.



Laura

[pipi_k]

14. No agreements!

Cameras in the stalls!

It's the only way!

[davsand]

16. I could almost see some asswipe principal (forgive the phrase) asking the school board for that.

Some of them are about that bright.





Laura

[Javaman]

10. "Please, sir, could you spare a square?"

sorry, I couldn't resist.

[longship]

12. At the school where I taught in CA there was never TP in boy's rest room

Any roll of TP would inevitably find its way into the toilet, the intent to clog the plumbing.

[frazzled]

17. I had no idea this was such a problem in schools ...

and it is a serious one. For those who dismiss the idea that the toilets being continually clogged is a real issue, think not only about the costs, but about the bathrooms being completely non-functional for those who really need to use them. Then there are the health issues involved in having a bathroom full of clogged toilets.

This isn't an easy issue to address for schools, I'm sure.

What about locked (unopenable) dispensers that dispense only a single sheet of paper at a time (e.g., not "rolls" but single sheets), with a time lapse of a few seconds before the next sheet became available--like many paper towel dispensers in public restrooms. It would take a lot more effort for kids to keep pulling out enough single sheets to do damage.

[Cirque du So-What]

19. As I recall from my school daze

some of the dispensers were 'self-limiting' in the sense that you could only pull out a few squares at a time before the paper broke, and if you were lucky, you could reach inside far enough to grab hold of the end and try again.

[zappaman]

22. BYOTP!

Smuggle it in if you have to!

[LeftInTX]

26. My husband's high school didn't have TP

He went to an all male Catholic school. This was in the 70s.

[narnian60]

27. They would also rip the soap dispensers off the walls

& sling soap everywhere at my school. Every preventive measure that was taken for any type of bathroom vandalism would work for awhile, but what we most relied upon was the TATTLETALE!

[PennsylvaniaMatt]

30. We had a problem at our school...and we brought the law into it

There were one or two incidents in the boys room with some vandalism on the walls (nothing major at all). That didn't stop the principal from trying to implement a plan from limiting EVERYBODY from going to the bathroom more than 3 times from a particular class during a 9 week period. Meaning that if you went to the bathroom more than 3 times from 7th period and more than 3 times during 8th period, you essentially had to wait 90 minutes until the end of the day to use the restroom.

Being a prospective lawyer, I, as class president, teamed up with a friend of mine whose dad was a federal lawyer. Upon research, and talking to my friends dad, this was against the law! You cannot legally PREVENT someone from using the restroom, which this policy was essentially doing. I summarized numerous court cases that backed up our position and took it to the principal. She lied to us and said that it was legal and that they had looked into everything, and that they were going to go ahead with the policy.

Come to find out from a teacher who was in a faculty meeting with her, she went and called the school solicitor after our meeting and it WASN'T in fact legal to do this.

She then backtracked and said that they weren't going ahead with the plan, saying she was giving us "a second chance." That wasn't true, because they already had the passes printed.

Enforcing rules and discipline is one thing, but sometimes, school administrators cross the line in punishing everyone.

[tabbycat31]

31. they locked all the bathrooms at my high school

Due to students smoking in them, and a kid with a hotshot attorney father intervened.

The year it was the worst was my senior year and I was so checked out by then.