Maryan

My name is Maryan Abdi, and I am a freshman at Chelsea High School.

Today, I want to talk about how schools should adapt to students’ ever-changing needs.

For example, I want our school to humanize the way it addresses smoking and vaping issues. Our school’s response to smoking and vaping was to lock the bathrooms. So, now, while there are 12 bathrooms at our school, only 2-3 bathrooms are available for 1,700 students to use.

Locking bathrooms hasn’t solved the smoking problem at our school; it only created problems for the rest of us. For example, I still remember how in my first week of school, I spent 20 minutes looking for a bathroom! To give you a visual of our school, our school is divided into three different sections: blue, green, and red. Blue and green connect on the 3rd floor, and all sides connect on the 2nd floor. Rest of the floors do not connect. During my 3rd period class, I needed to use the bathroom. My third period class was on the fourth floor on red side, so I started checking the bathrooms on red side. All of the bathrooms on red side were locked. I went to the next side, the green side, but the bathrooms on the green side were also all locked. At this point, I had spent twenty minutes looking for the bathroom, so I was really frustrated. I went to the blue side, and I found one bathroom that was open. But, that one bathroom was already full, and there was a long line. I ended up just going back to class. Ultimately, I couldn’t go to the bathroom until my 6th period class, when my 6th period teacher opened a teacher’s bathroom for me to use. Teachers usually don’t open the bathroom for students, and most of the time, they aren’t allowed to do so.

Bathrooms are not the cause of smoking and vaping. In fact, locking the bathrooms did nothing to prevent students from smoking and vaping. By locking the bathrooms, the school is only preventing students like myself from using the bathrooms.

If schools would like to come up with a solution to smoking and vaping, they should address the main cause: social influence and stress. They should also communicate with students to figure out a solution. If they think smoking and vaping is an issue, they should ask us how to address it, instead of just taking our rights away. I hope our school becomes a place where we humanize how we address issues.

The bathroom issue is one of many issues at our school. To help us address all these issues, I ask you to support the Safe and Supportive Schools Initiative. This policy will help schools get funding and develop policies that humanize the way they adapt to students’ ever-changing needs.