You’re a student, not a janitor

Forget about basketball practice, students in Boston may have to clean school toilets. A coalition of students from more than 40 Boston-area church and youth groups is demanding cleaner restrooms. The current restrooms don’t have toilet paper, soap, or paper towels. Some stalls are missing doors and the overall odor is unbearable. The student’s have proposed solutions, one of which is to help clean them.The students plan to meet Tuesday night with school administrators to describe the despicable restrooms, offer solutions, and demand action. The real solution, as you might have guessed, is to end the government’s monopoly on education. Faced with a competitive, capitalist environment where schools had to compete for students, government administrators would quickly offer adequate bathrooms.

In the meantime, the students suggest checklists for janitors, which the janitors would use to indicate when they cleaned the bathrooms and what areas they cleaned. Unfortunately, the students also offered to help clean the bathrooms. One protestor said, “If we’re going to ask them to make sure our bathrooms are restocked, the least we can do is keep them clean.”

This comment is as communist as John F. Kennedy’s famous statement, “ask not what our country can do you, ask what you can do for your country.” The truth is that we are not about to ask curfew-loving, hypocritical, alcoholic politicians to do anything for us. In addition, we’re not their slaves so we’re not going to ask ourselves what we can do for them. In other words, we’re not going to clean their stinking toilets.

Instead, we want a just society where students go to private schools that have tolerable dress-codes, “open” campuses, and, most importantly, super-clean bathrooms. Those who choose to go to these private schools will spend their time reading books, not cleaning bathrooms.

Many school administrators in Boston concede that the restrooms are hideous. However, they surprisingly blame students for the problems. The administrators explain that if supplies are left in the bathrooms, unruly students clog the toilets with toilet paper and throw rolls out the windows.

“If you want a clean bathroom and paper towels and toilet paper and everything that should be there,” she said, “you have to have an honor system and an issue of respecting what’s there,” said Maria Garcia-Aaronson, headmaster at Boston Latin Academy.

According to Maria, the solution lies with the students. Could you imagine if a restaurant asked customers to clean the bathrooms? Do you think the restaurant would have any customers? It would only have customers if it had a monopoly and that is the only reason government schools are packed with students.

Private schools would have less bathroom abuse because most students genuinely want to go to the school. If the school did have a problem with toilet-paper projectiles, then the school would hire permanent bathroom attendants, like the ones found at upscale restaurants and bars.

Since you may graduate before getting the chance to go to private school, you should protest the inadequate conditions of your current school’s restrooms. Demand clean restrooms but don’t offer to clean them.