Illinois High School Removes Exterior Bathroom Doors After “Inappropriate Activities”

Not every school is off to a chill start to the new year.

Outside of Chicago, Oak Park and River Forest High School has removed all of their restrooms' exterior doors. So stall doors are still there but the main doors are not.

Despite the district saying they have a reason behind removing the doors, not all students are thrilled about it. OPRF junior Laila Rosenthal started a Change.org petition to get the bathroom doors back. Her classmate, junior Gia Fredrisdorf, told CBS Chicago:

I think that they could have done things like vape detectors or smoke detectors, because those do exist. If you're in the bathroom, you have to hide in the bathroom from like a school shooter or something. If there's no doors in the bathroom, that's another risk.

The district sent a release to CBS Chicago as to the issues that made them decide to remove the doors in the first place:

The decision to remove the exterior doors of most bathrooms at the school was based on an evidence-based practice in architecture called crime prevention through environmental design or CPTED. One of the most frequent complaints that we received last year from parents, faculty, staff, and students was about inappropriate activities taking place in the bathrooms, such as vaping, skipping class, fighting, and so forth.

 

The exterior doors were removed only from bathrooms where doing so did not provide a direct line of sight into the area where stalls or urinals are located. None of the stall doors were removed. The bathroom entrances now function similarly to those you see at airports, many schools, and other public places where the bathrooms do not have entrance doors.

Several students are indifferent to it, saying that it has majorly curbed vaping in the bathrooms. But Leila says she's going to the principal or school board if her petition gets 500 signatures.