School sees rise in vandalism as students take out end-of-year rage on bathrooms

Recently, Oshkosh West students and teachers hoping to make a quick trip to the restroom have found their plans all too often thwarted by the discovery of an “Out of Order” sign posted on the door of the nearest facility, sending them on a hunt for an operational restroom. This problem is caused not by routine maintenance but vandalism, which forces the closure of facilities while repairs are being completed. According to Principal Rebecca Montour, vandalism at West, though a struggle since the beginning of the year, has become more frequent and destructive in the past few months.

“We’re seeing in more of the boys’ bathrooms, we've had some doors ripped off hinges or stalls kicked in, a lot of fruit being smashed on the walls or plugged down into toilets and causing damage that way,” she said. “The girls' has been more writing, like Sharpie on the walls with vulgar things about people in the school or things like that.”

Such vandalism is problematic not only because of destruction of property but because of major effects on usability, as Brett Wolff, the head custodian at West, notes.

“The drawing on walls and stalls doesn't really pose a safety concern, but the things being displayed can be seen as offensive to individuals,” he said. “The breaking of stalls and dispensers can leave sharp edges and lack of privacy in stalls, resulting in the bathroom being closed down until we can fix the problems.”

As a result, individuals may have to spend time wandering the school to find an operational restroom and wait in longer lines for an open stall. Junior Summer Zinsli has encountered this issue. 

“It actually makes me upset,” she said. “I go during passing time because that’s what they tell us to do, and I go to the nearest bathroom, but when it’s locked, I have to go farther, and then I get marked tardy, and then I get truancy letters when I go home.”

While he has found these closures add a layer of inconvenience and stress to trying to use the restroom, social studies teacher Daniel Lewis has not noticed a major effect on student engagement.

“I would say it probably hasn’t affected learning in the classroom all that much because there are other bathrooms even if the nearest bathroom is closed,” he said. “So it might make them miss a little bit more class time if they go use the bathroom during class, but aside from that, I don’t think there’s any big impact.”

Beyond the classroom, vandalism is putting more strain on custodial staff, who are unable to follow their routine cleaning and preventative maintenance schedules while they are repairing restrooms, Wolff explains.

“Depending on the severity of the vandalism, it can take us anywhere from hours to days to correct the issue,” he said. 

Adding to pressure on students and staff is the sheer number of instances of vandalism that can occur at one time, Montour says.

“We had a kind of ebb and flow,” she said. “So there was a week where we were getting it reported almost every day, and then we'll go a couple weeks with nothing, and then another week where it kind of up ticks again. So it's kind of hard to pinpoint.”

Senior Finn Lipke says that, several times each week, bathroom closures force her to spend additional time outside of class. This problem has become especially apparent during second semester.

“I think people are just getting fed up with school,” she said. “Second semester is hard to get through, so people just get bored and go into the bathroom and start vandalizing.”

Montour thinks that vandalism in restrooms may be connected to other behavioral infractions.

“I do think a lot of it is kids who are skipping class,” she said. “They’re not in class, and they’re just hanging out in the bathroom, and then, I don’t know, they get bored or what it is.”

For Lewis, the rise in instances of vandalism reflects students’ more general lack of respect for the school environment and disregard for cleanliness, which he hopes to see change.

“There have been several times this year where I’ve gone into the bathroom and there are just reams of paper towel all over the floor, all thrown around,” he said. “I have been kind of mad when that happened, and I cleaned it up because, what the heck, this is a common space.”

Privacy policy prevents administrators from putting cameras in bathrooms, so staff have had to use more creative strategies to determine which students are causing this problem. Among these tactics is posting forms in restrooms for staff to document the state of the spaces over the course of the day, Montour explains.

“A teacher will go in to check, see there’s no vandalism, and write their name and the time,” she said. “Then, if the next teacher comes in and sees, ‘Oh, there is some writing on this wall,’ or, ‘Oh, this was damage,’ we can look and see, this teacher was here at 9:30, there was no damage. This teacher's here at 10:00, there is damage. Now we have a 30-minute window to see who is in that bathroom.”

Staff intervention is critical to resolving the vandalism issue. Lewis, who has taken it upon himself to stand outside certain bathrooms between classes when his schedule allows, has observed teachers making greater effort to create an adult presence around the school’s bathrooms.

“We've been checking the bathrooms to see if there was any vandalism in first hour, so we kind of pinpoint the possible suspects who did said vandalism,” he said. “We do hourly checks on bathrooms.”

According to Montour, the school’s response has begun to curtail vandalism in restrooms, likely from the combination of increased monitoring and students becoming more aware of the consequences they will face when caught. 

“It’s really since the teachers have been checking bathrooms more often, we’ve seen a huge improvement, so we’re hoping we can keep that up,” she said. 

Students found to have vandalized bathrooms face severe consequences, as Montour described. 

“If we find a student has vandalized a bathroom, they’re paying for the cost of the labor and any parts or paint, anything that needs to go into it to fix it up,” she said. “They could face anything as small as a detention, but leading all the way up to an expulsion.”

Lewis believes that West has the opportunity to use its response to bathroom vandalism to teach students lasting lessons about the importance of taking ownership of shared spaces and showing respect for one’s community. 

“If you’ve ever cleaned the bathroom, you’re not going to try and make it dirty faster because you know it’s not fun to clean,” he said. “My recommended punishment for anyone caught vandalizing the bathroom is to have to clean said bathroom. You understand that, yes, people do have to clean up after all of these messes that we created in society.”

In addition to creating consequences for individual students engaging in vandalism, administrators are trying to send a message to the wider student body to stop this issue, addressing the rise in vandalism in recent school announcements. Zinsli agrees that the school’s response has begun to reduce this issue, but has doubts about the effectiveness of some of the strategies being deployed by the school. 

“I see teachers standing outside the bathrooms, monitoring them, but they’re not even watching it. They’re just talking to the other teacher that’s with them,” she said. “I was in one of my classes last semester, and there were a bunch of noises coming from the E Wing boys’ bathroom, and the teacher didn't do anything.”

Lipke hopes that students will adopt more respect for the school’s facilities and take a stand if they see others destroying property in restrooms.

“I think if an act of vandalism is going on, try to intervene,” she said. “Like, yelling, ‘Could you not, I need to pee,’ or something because the bathrooms were made to be used, not vandalized.”

Montour believes that students frustrated by the series of recent bathroom closures have the opportunity to practice advocacy by reporting vandalism they encounter and discouraging other students from damaging property. 

“I know it’s an old building, but it would be really nice to see students take some pride in the building and stand up for the fact that 99 percent of the students here just want to use the bathroom,” she said. “They're not doing anything wrong, so if they had a louder voice, sometimes I feel like that would help with the one percent who's doing the damage.”

by Aria Boehler

Published May 19th, 2025

Oshkosh West Index Volume 121 Issue VIII