Throughout the month of December, many SHS students, sensitive to their daily school routines, became immediately aware of slight change when several bathrooms around school were suddenly closed. Some speculated that the so-called ‘vape rooms’ were closed to discourage students from juuling at school, while others guessed that they had been closed because of mechanical problems. In reality, it was a combination of both that led to the coincidental closures of three bathrooms within SHS.

First, the high school administration decided to close the boy’s bathroom on the 4th floor, along with the girls’ bathroom on the 1st floor. Both were locations where multiple students had been caught using vape pens and juuls. The practice of closing bathrooms—often places for students to be found vaping and hiding other illicit activities—is used by many high schools, including Bronx High School of Science. Still, the Scarsdale administration, along with its student body, would prefer not to have to undergo such measures. “[Closing the bathrooms] doesn’t feel great because it doesn’t feel like the right solution. But if it’s a short term message…if there’s gonna be so much vaping in here or juuling that you can’t control it, it’s going to be closed,” explained SHS assistant principal Christopher Griffin.

Following these two closures on the basis of disrupting juuling, the boy’s bathroom on the 4th floor at the hallway intersection above the Brewster entrance was closed for mechanical repairs related to wiring. Unsurprisingly, having to travel farther from some locations to use bathrooms proved inconvenient for students. “When I have classes on the second floor I have to either go to the third floor bathroom or the one by the commons across the auditorium, which makes me miss more time from classes. Obviously, it has annoyed me a lot because that second floor bathroom is positioned well but now it’s useless,” said Andronikos Georgalas ’20.

For the administration, the difficulty lies in finding a balance between maintaining normalcy while trying to address the problem of vaping at school. “We don’t want to inconvenience kids who are using the restroom. It’s a hard [problem] because we’ve had so many kids come to us to say you need to get the juuling thing under control. So we’re trying all sorts of different techniques,” said Griffin.

Fortunately for world language students, the 4th floor boy’s bathroom is set to reopen in January after winter break. The girls’ bathroom near the cafeteria was reopened only 2 weeks after it was first closed as a result of pressure from female students who were especially inconvenienced. The administration had plans to reopen the 2nd floor boy’s bathroom, but it continues to remain locked, presumably for repairs to finish.