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Throughout this school year, NS has seen an increase of vandalization in the school. The majority of the damage has been happening in the boy’s restrooms.
“I will attribute that all to the Tik Tok challenge that you guys are all aware of,” said Principal Christine Straatman, “which wasn’t only to vandalize the bath- rooms, it was to vandalize schools.”
For the past couple of months, Tik Tok has had an ongoing challenge called “Devious licks.” The devious lick is a challenge centered around the destruc- tion or theft of school property. It is spe- cifically targeting the school system.
About 56 percent of the student body have the Tik Tok app, according to a recent NS Times survey.
As part of the devious lick challenge, the bathrooms at NS have been demolished. The soap dispensers and soap have been stolen several times, paper towel dispensers have been destroyed, the toilets have been clogged, stall doors have been broken, etc. As the year progresses NS is seeing more damage being done to the school bathrooms than in the past twenty years.
“We are not done really putting numbers together,” custodian Jeff Pack said. “We’re in the thousands now. You figure one sink to fix a faucet; time, labor and then the materials; you’re at $150, and there’s six or seven just right there.”
The damages to the bathrooms are costing the school thousands of dollars to fix. The buying of items to replace bro- ken ones and the time and labor it takes to install all of these items isn’t cheap.
In an attempt to contain all of the vandalism happening in the school, the boys’ bathrooms were all locked except the one in the East hallway. This was not only to help contain the damages but was also to assist in the investigation. It is much easier to tell when damages occurred if they only have to monitor one bathroom. When they have set up a time frame that damages occurred, they can see who was in the bathrooms at that time to narrow down suspects.
“It’s not fair that 95 percent of the boy students are suffering because of what 5 percent of them want to do,” Pack said. “I hear some of the students in the halls, they’re upset that the bathrooms are locked and they have to walk all the way to the other side of the school to go to the bathroom.”
The vandalism has only been because of a small group of students. Not everyone has been participating in the devious lick challenges, but because of the people that are, the rest of the students have to deal with consequences. The biggest one being that the school had to shut down all of the boys’ bathrooms except one.
“I was mad about it,” said junior Connor Power. “I don’t have time to go to the East hallway before class starts.”
There was a lot of reproach from the student body when the bathrooms were shut down; however, it caused students to realize the consequences of the actions of other students.
“I think they finally got frustrated with it. They finally said enough is enough,” Straatman said, “because I now have to walk from this side of the building, clear to this side of the building if I want to go to the restroom. This is our school; this is our house. We are going to hold each other accountable, that has helped to slow the vandalism that we are seeing.”
With everything that has happened, the vandalism, the closing down of the bathroom and such, the student body has seen enough. The influence of peers in the lives of students is greater than that of the school administration. When a student has their peers telling them that they need to stop they are much more likely to listen and principal Straatman believes that that is what has happened. This has allowed the school to reopen most of the bathrooms that were previously closed.
“I’m just going to keep asking kids to do the right thing,” Straatman said, “be good citizens, and that means citizens in our community and in our school.”
