The bathrooms at Aliso Niguel have long since been a point of complaint for the majority of students and new issues and criticisms continue to rise as each year goes by.
As the issues carry over from past school years, Aliso Niguel students continue to struggle with the state of the public bathrooms and their own personal hygiene in keeping them clean. Although no major controversies surrounding the bathrooms have taken place like those that have historically taken place, their state has not improved significantly and it is only a matter of time before an incident occurs.
As one of the primary complaints of the physical state of Aliso’s campus, the bathrooms are definitely one of the more unsavory aspects of the school.
Laura Richards (12), a student who has been attending campus in-person since freshman year, says that the school’s bathrooms “smell of vape flavoring, there’s barely any toilet paper, and only one sink works.”
This represents some of the most prevalent grievances with the school bathrooms reflecting very real problems on campus. For example, the drug issue that tends to take place most commonly in the student bathrooms has faced multiple attempts by administration to address the problem at hand. Although the efforts were somewhat successful, the smell never quite goes away, leaving the problem yet to be truly solved.
The toilet paper complaint specifically has been brought up by the Student Atlas Club, and they successfully achieved results of better toilet paper. This still does not fix the issue that there does not seem to be enough of it, but this aspect of the bathroom is, in fact, improving. The lack of toilet paper may also come from the fact that much of it ends up on the floor. As many other issues in the school go, that problem is due to student behavior and may be a bit harder to correct.
However, one of the biggest, most prevalent problems, is the questionable functionality of the round sink with multiple faucet heads that appears in some of the bathrooms, particularly the girl’s restroom next to the 200’s building. After using the restroom, students are forced to walk around the large sink, checking practically every faucet to find the singular one that still works. Whether this is a problem with plumbing, the pipes, or yet another issue caused by apathy of the students who use the bathroom is unclear, but regardless, it needs to be dealt with soon before none of the sinks work anymore.
Another recurring complaint is voiced by Kat Tran (11) who states, “Sometimes I go into the bathroom, and the sink and floor are just filled with overflowing trash.”
An experience that many undoubtedly share, the sinks are often filled with garbage such as food and even pregnancy tests. Much of this then ends up on the floor. Many treat the bathroom as their personal trash can and do not use it with the care that would leave it in a desirable state.
As the school simply does not have the funding to hire more custodians to constantly be cleaning the bathrooms, a majority of the time their state of cleanliness depends on the care of the students. Even if there were more employees at Aliso to clean up the constant messiness around campus, it takes just a few inconsiderate students to create a serious mess that would take time to fix.
The only way to fix the problem of poor hygiene and uncleanliness of the school bathrooms is to continue encouraging students to respect the spaces they share, but this initiative is unlikely to make a serious impact on the current state of the bathrooms.
