The new year has brought with it the usual yearly changes, and one of those has many of the men at the school up in arms.  The school administration took the liberty of replacing our old, dirty, vandalized bathrooms with sparkling clean, brand new facilities over the summer, but how much of an improvement are they really?

Now, if you were to ask any guy in the school to describe the state of the old restrooms, you would have been met with a unanimous indifference.  Sure we all knew that the bathrooms weren’t fantastic; they could have been cleaner, and there was always some new form of graffiti to see, but it was still just a bathroom.  Nobody spent enough time in there to really form an opinion on the conditions.

Visually, the made-over bathrooms look very nice, I must admit, but the issue is much more personal than that.  Many of the gentlemen using these restrooms complain that the newly installed urinals are majorly lacking in the privacy department.  With no barriers fixed in between the toilets, many guys feel downright uncomfortable with their proximity to everyone else.

The problems are arising, in my opinion, because the most important changes took place behind the scenes.  Jerry Christenson, head janitor at MHS, told me that the purpose for the makeover wasn’t totally aesthetic.  On top of replacing pipes and fixtures that were in still in place from the ‘60’s, Jerry told me, “The benefits are more modern looking restrooms that are more handicapped accessible.”  Along with those improvements, the bathrooms are far more eco-friendly, with more efficient light fixtures and waterless toilets.  Another reason for the change, Jerry says, was to continue Minnetonka’s reputation as an Energy Star school.  Being an Energy Star school means that we save more energy than 70% of schools nationwide, and the last two years Minnetonka was actually better than 80% of the nation, and that’s without the bathroom upgrades!

So, despite the male population’s general frustration with the remodeled bathrooms, it would seem that the pros far outweigh the cons in this situation.  Unfortunately in this case, saving the Earth means sacrificing the privacy of a few guys.