No Pass, No Bathroom: Teacher’s Policy on Students’ Bathroom Use Sparks Controversy
“If you need to go to the bathroom and do not have any passes left, you will need to serve a 15 minute detention (before or after school, not during lunch) each time you use the restroom,” a bathroom pass reads. “Passes may be denied if it is not an appropriate time for students to be leaving the classroom.”
The image of this bathroom pass becomes controversial on Reddit’s r/mildlyinfuriating forum with more than 50,000 votes. Posted by u/SushiMyLife with the title, “Students were abusing bathroom privileges, so the teacher did this,” the post has likewise earned thousands of comments with conflicting points of view.
Some Redditors admit the abuses that students often commit when using the bathroom, while others shared how much pain — even shame — they had to go through due to unjust denial of their right to use the school bathroom.
One Reddit user shared an ugly fact about bathroom abuses: “People in my grade regularly used the bathroom as an excuse to leave earlier before lunch break to get to a McDonald’s or something and come back in time. The teachers weren’t happy when the guy who needed to go to the toilet came back with 2 bags of fast food after break started. (Though we still didn’t get a rule like that).”
This was another unfortunate piece of reality from another commenter: “They literally have teachers sitting outside bathrooms in schools so kids don’t smoke in them. Teachers are asked to be security, parents, and educators, all for barely more than minimum wage, while getting bitched out by parents and admin for not doing enough. If that doesn’t push some people to do crazy and drastic things, I’m not sure what will.”
Meanwhile, this was a first-hand experience of another commenter, “I used to be a sub, and I was pretty lax on bathroom policies. Teachers would have things like this sometimes, and I would tell the students that while I was there, they just needed to let me know and not worry about the paper. Guess who got yelled at and almost fired for not following bathroom policies after one student set fire to a bathroom trash can and another straight up left school and ended up getting caught stealing soda and chips from a gas station on the way? Edited to add that I think a lot of people forgot or didn’t know that there was literally a TikTok trend a while back that encouraged kids to go to school bathrooms and destroy them, and several of the schools I went to had tens of thousands of dollars in damages because of it.”
However, the prohibition has impacted many innocent students, and no amount of money can equate with the pain and shame they have to suffer due to the unjust denial of their right to use the bathroom:
“I had bladder issues even as a child. Teacher knew this. Kept refusing to let me go, I’d wet my pants (second grade). I was also painfully shy, but one day I had enough and walked home. Refused to go back. Threw fits if my mom tried to drag me there. Finally someone stepped in, and I was switched to a different teacher. The following year, the teacher was fired for hitting a kid with a book and causing enough damage they they needed 10 stitches. I understand that abuse happens, but you can’t make a blanket statement. I’m 55 and never got over my dislike of teachers,” a Reddit user wrote.
I started menstruating really early, like 4th grade early. I didn’t know yet then, but I had PCOS. Things were really rough. When I HAVE to go, I HAVE to go, and it takes me as an adult 15-20min to go, every couple hours. As a kid, teachers didn’t understand this, outright refusing a lot. It caused so many stomach issues and questionable hygiene. To this day, I dislike elementary school teachers,” another person revealed.
“I have Crohn’s! Just the idea that someone could be punished for a normal human function is so frustrating and is bringing back a lot of anxiety from when I was a teenager and was just diagnosed with Crohn’s. Even as an adult, sometimes I have to remind the supervisors of my job that I’m not using the bathroom 5 times because I dont wanna work, I’m using them because my body hates me and whatever I had for breakfast,” shared another commenter with a similarly agonizing experience.
What do you think?
