This 2022-2023 school year, Central Kitsap High School solidified a bathroom rule restricting bathroom use in order to ensure students are in class for the most important parts. Students and teachers are voicing how this policy has affected their freedoms within the building.

Towards the end of the previous school year, the high school initiated this bathroom policy with the belief that the first and last ten minutes of class is the most important and students should not skip it. 

However, implementing as late in the year as they did, not many students followed the rule last year. CKHS this year firmly started enforcing the bathroom policy in hopes of higher participation. 

This regulation caused many students to feel unable to use the bathroom at their own leisure and are sitting through the start of class thinking about how bad they have to use the restroom. 

Nick Strickland, a Sophomore said, “Sometimes during passing period, I want to go [to the bathroom] but I don’t really have enough time and I don’t want to be tardy, so I’ll go to class and then have to wait another ten minutes. It’s a little distracting.”

Strickland is one of many students who is often unable to access the bathroom during passing periods due to limited time and crowded hallways. Once in class, he must wait at least ten more minutes before relieving himself. “I can barely go from Mr. Schuette’s to there [my next class] in the five minutes because of all the traffic. So I don’t have enough time to use the bathroom,” said Strickland. 

The hope of the bathroom rule is to maximize time students spend in the most important chunks of class time. Some students feel the chunks of time have been miss-labeled. 

When Sophie Driskell, a Senior, was asked which chunk of time in class was most important she said, “The middle of class, so not the first 10 minutes. Because that’s when most students are there and teachers are doing the bulk of the lesson.” 

Driskell shared a frustration with difficulty using the bathroom. She said she is unable to use the bathroom during the passing period due to too many people in the bathrooms and hallways and already has to speed walk to class in order to not be tardy. 

Some people at CKHS believe there could be more reason to this bathroom rule than just maximizing chunks of time in the classroom. 

David Tracewell, a teacher in CK’s English department stated, “But it’s also I think, for the school, they instituted that because they noticed that most of the infractions are in the first or last ten minutes of class… But unfortunately, my opinion is that usually it’s a small minority of students that take advantage of that so I feel bad enforcing it because everyone’s bodily functions are different.”

For the number of students who may have used this time for rule-breaking, this policy makes sense. But many students are finding themselves unable to use the bathroom in a timely manner, causing discomfort and distractions. 

In the case of an emergency, students are allowed to use the bathroom. ‘Emergency’ is up for some speculation; Tracewell said he always leaves his day’s plan on the screen and has no issue if his students use the  bathroom in the start  of class.