Oh, suds! There’s no more soap in the bathroom! How are you supposed to wash your hands now? Franticly, you try to find some other way to clean your hands. Most of the time when you think of a bathroom, you associate the word with a toilet, a sink, a mirror, and soap. These are the fundamental items needed to call a bathroom a bathroom. At the NYC iSchool we are missing three of these items. Before you know it, the toilet might get taken out as well.

At the NYC iSchool, the only boys bathroom does not have a soap dispenser and the door must remain open.

Since the first quarter of the 2016-2017 school year, the door to the bathroom must remain open. This has created an ongoing petition among male students to have their privacy.

From the countless videos, Instagram posts, and conversations about wanting the door to be closed, and deserving a mirror, it is shocking that major protests haven’t erupted yet. The only thing spreading faster than the comments are the germs.

“The boys bathroom in one word would be neglected. We just recently got warm water, even though the soap dispenser is back it’s hardly ever full, and there are almost never paper towels to dry our hands with!” Exclaimed Demarco Jean, a junior at the iSchool.

The soap issue became so severe that students started bringing in their own soap. Demarco Jean was the first heroic student to bring in soap.

In an interview he stated, “I felt it was necessary for me to purchase soap because the school didn’t seem like they were gonna change it anytime soon, and we can’t have all the boys walking around with dirty hands.”

The reason as to why there is no soap dispenser in the bathroom is because according to Ms. Leimsider, “The soap dispensers were ripped off the wall, so we put a new one in. Then someone, I am not sure who or how many people, took the lid of the soap dispenser and started throwing the soap on the floors.” Perhaps they were just trying to keep the floors clean, or maybe even create a slip and slide! This has resulted in requiring the bathroom door to be open at all times.

Students are definitely not pleased about this rule. In an interview with Joel Rader, a sophomore at the iSchool, he stated, “I feel like keeping the bathroom door open is a disturbance of the boys privacy at the iSchool.” Joel also suggested a new method to make sure the bathroom is respected without denying male students their privacy. His idea is, “[Perhaps] people could sign in and out, so that if it [the bathroom] gets vandalized in any way, people can figure out who was responsible for the damage.

It is almost as if when the boys receive one new item, they lose another. One day you have soap, and the next you have paper towels. Is the school preparing them to go on a survival tv show, perhaps “No Soap And Afraid?”

The “i” in iSchool must stand for “I need soap” or “I need privacy”: Who knows when the day will come when students will have all the necessary bathroom supplies and be allowed to close the door. If you come to visit the iSchool, make sure to bring a pocket hand sanitizer, and soap to donate due to the lack of it.

*Editor’s note 1/9/17 the boys bathroom now has a soap dispenser again, victory!