Safety trumps privacy as area high school removes bathroom doors

Students at a London-area high school say their privacy rights are being violated after the school removed exterior washroom doors because of vandalism and vaping.

Woodland Mavka and Aleks Godfrey-Fidom, Grade 9 students at Strathroy District Collegiate Institute, said they were in class Wednesday when they came across social media posts by schoolmates showing maintenance workers removing the doors.

“I went to check for myself because I said, ‘Is this something Photoshopped or at another school?’” Mavka said.

“So, I went down a couple of halls, and they were taking down another door in front of us.”

The Thames Valley District school board on Wednesday defended the move, saying it was made after hearing from parents and students at the school who said they didn’t feel safe using the school’s washrooms “due to large numbers of students congregating in these spaces engaging in vandalism and vaping.”

“The decision to remove the exterior doors of the washroom will help ensure a higher level of supervision and allow us to prioritize the health and safety of students and staff,” said Christina Giannacopoulos, Thames Valley’s superintendent of achievement, in an emailed statement.

The board said the washrooms at the school on Second Street are designed similarly to public washrooms, meaning removing the doors does not impact the privacy of users because the inside of the space isn’t visible from the school corridors.

But the decision isn’t sitting well with students.

An online petition started Wednesday already had garnered more than 200 signatures.

“I’m going to be completely honest, I was really pissed off because that’s privacy to us minors,” Godfrey-Fidom said.

The removal of the doors already has resulted in students peeking into the women’s washroom, which has made her feel uncomfortable, she said.

Both students said the decision to remove the doors came as a surprise to many students because no major incidents have happened at the school.

“There was never any warnings or anything like that, and there has never been an instance in a washroom that would justify them to do this,” Mavka said.

“Fights and bullying don’t happen in washrooms. It happens all over the school.”

Though an unusual measure, Thames Valley isn’t the first school board to take such a step to deal with safety concerns.

In 2021, the Waterloo Region District school board made the decision to remove exterior washroom doors at several schools in response to “public health concerns around congregating,” according to news reports.

A British Columbia school board took similar steps in 2021 after seeing an increase in vandalism following a TikTok bathroom challenge that encouraged students to trash school bathrooms.

“We continue to have dialogue with the student community around being positive contributors to the school,” Giannacopoulos said.

“We will continue to request feedback on additional strategies that prioritize the safety of the school community.”

With files from Heather Rivers

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