Bathroom Tok: Don’t Steal The Toilets

For those who don’t know, Devious Licks is a TikTok challenge in which people around the world destroy school property mostly in bathrooms. TikTok is a video-sharing platform used to connect socially around the world.

For Devious Licks, people break toilets and steal things from the bathroom and then post about it. This hit our school on September 29, when the three boys’ bathrooms in the A wing were closed after theft and vandalism, and have been closed since, though they are open for weekend activities and during testing when they can be monitored. The B wing boys’ bathrooms near the front office and near the cafeteria are always open. Everyone has to sign out in each classroom to use the bathroom.

The sign-out sheet makes sense so the administration can track students if anything else happens, but also doesn’t help if many people are out at one time. Because of this challenge, everyone is on edge and it already doesn’t help that only one person can go to the bathroom at a time during class. They have to sign in and go to the front office and come back. This can take a solid 7-10 minutes making it hard for the next person to go. Many have stated their annoyance toward the sign-out sheet for the bathrooms.

The sign-out sheet seems to be different for certain classes though they all are used for the same purpose. Some teachers use an online copy through BrightSpace and others just use clipboards with copied sheets from the main office. Each student must record the date, their name, the time they leave, circle their destination, and record the time when they return to the classroom.  

Some people might say that having gender-neutral bathrooms around the school and letting people go where they want could solve this problem. I see how this would impact everyone in the building successfully, but a lot needs to be taken into consideration. There would still need to be different areas for privacy for everyone to which could be problematic with urinals. Changing the whole layout of bathrooms would cost the school more money so we would have to come up with a cost-effective plan.

Devious Licks seems to be a way to be recognized, and there will always be those immature people – we can never get away from them – who want attention. It’s not just freshman, I feel like it’s a little bit of everyone who is immature. People think it’s cool so they continue to do things like this and ruin what the school has offered.  The sign-out sheet I think is okay for now but I do think that they could make it easier and faster for people online instead of on paper. 

There could be more gender-neutral bathrooms around the school that are easier to find for the students. This is an issue that comes up in the equity leadership council, so the school could address multiple issues at once.

The bathrooms also have a sign that says there is a 2 person limit but I’ve never seen anyone obey it. I do think just having 2 people in a bathroom wouldn’t really change anything since they are already separated from the different stalls, so I think it should be gone altogether since there are usually double that amount of people in the bathroom.

I personally don’t know where the bathrooms are still since I don’t use them that much but when I do it seems that people get in and out quickly. The bathrooms continue to be talked about in multiple classrooms and clubs and will hopefully be able to open sooner than later to create less traffic and other school bathroom-related issues. 

To solve the bathroom issue, for now, the school should open the bathrooms so that we are not punishing students who didn’t do anything wrong.