The beginning of the 2023-2024 school year marked the beginning of new bathroom policies at JJHS. Due to the spike in vaping and vandalism (especially in bathrooms), students are now required to sign in and write their time of entry before entering the bathroom.  

In addition, bathrooms previously available for students are now off limits: “staff only”, thus greatly reducing the number of bathrooms open to students. 

Although implemented to encourage appropriate, responsible behavior and hold students accountable, these well-intended policies have not led to positive change. JJHS students, most of whom do not vape, are inconvenienced by having to miss class time to travel to one of the few unlocked bathrooms. Those students who do vape have not stopped vaping in bathrooms, but now sign in and congregate in different bathrooms to do the same thing. Also, the overall cleanliness of the bathrooms has declined because the student body is confined to less than half of the bathrooms at the school (7 of the 13 are off limits to students). Some of the bathrooms that are now off-limits include those in the A, B, Lower Q, and Art Hallways. These bathrooms are conveniently located next to a high concentration of classrooms and students, resulting in students wandering the halls in search of an open bathroom and missing valuable class time. 

There is no question that the vaping culture at John Jay should be mitigated and that students should be respectful of school property, themselves, and the greater community, including the custodial staff. But punishing the entire student body by restricting access to bathrooms is hardly a compassionate solution, or a solution that makes any sense at all, based upon the number of students in the school as compared to the number of staff members.  Neither is it a solution addressing the vaping issue or the disgusting state in which some students trash the bathrooms.   

If these policies were creating positive change, it would be easier to get behind them, even at the cost of spending more time away from class. Sadly, this is not the case, and the vaping culture and poor treatment of bathrooms at John Jay persists, but now all students pay the price.