As a college preparatory school that prepared students for life after high school, we shouldn’t still be requiring students to have a limited number of bathroom breaks per quarter that are a also a limited amount of time. Bathroom rules and passes were necessary in say, kindergarten, but as almost adults the simple need to go to the bathroom should not still be restricted.

Numerous teachers in the Upper School mandate in their class rules that students can leave class to go to the bathroom only three times each quarter.  If students disobey this restriction they will need to sit down with a teacher and their grades could be affected. While it is understandable that students should be in class for the maximum amount of time they can, Being able to go to the bathroom only 3 times in the total 23 days of each class per cycle is ridiculous. Especially considering that on Wednesdays when there is no tutorial, students have to wait from 10:45 until the end of the school day to go to the bathroom if they don’t have another free period. While students could potentially go the bathroom during the 30 minutes of lunch, the lunch line on Wednesdays takes can take 15 minutes to get through leaving only 15 minutes to eat and be at the next class. Teachers are not at the same disadvantage as students because they can go around the lunch lines and get their food right away leaving lots of time afterwards for the bathroom.

The second part of the problem is the amount of time teachers who follow these restrictions allot to go to the bathroom, commonly it’s only two to three minutes however the only bathrooms are on the first floor of the Upper School or in the Middle School. So for students in a class that’s not on the first floor or the middle school, which is most, it can take a couple of minutes just to get to the bathroom and back to class. As almost adults it is the student’s responsibility to be honest about if they really have to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water and teachers need to give them the benefit of the doubt. If teachers are concerned about students missing a particularly important part of class then they should tell students at the start to wait until a certain time if they have to go.

This is not kindergarten anymore, if students have to go to the bathroom at an appropriate time than let them go and if they miss something important than they should understand it is their responsibility to catch up.

Read the other side here.