The 2018-2019 school year has started with a bang. Less than a month into school, and the vast majority of the student body is sick with this horrible cold. Never before has an epidemic plagued the school this quickly and this early in the year. So why have we suddenly been hit with this widespread illness? What’s different this year? The bathroom passes. That’s right, I believe the implementation of the bathroom passes is causing students and staff members to come down with a cold.

If you think about it, the bathroom passes are actually quite disgusting. Some teachers’ bathroom passes have strings or lanyards, allowing students to wear them around their necks. Others don’t. So where is a student supposed to put it while they’re using the bathroom? Their pocket, if they have one and it fits, but, if not, the only plausible place is the bathroom floor. And no matter how hard our wonderful janitors clean, the bathroom floor is still a disgusting germ fest. Someone puts their bathroom pass on the floor, and it becomes covered in germs. The next step is washing hands, and students are faced with the same problem here. Where do they put the bathroom passes? The floor again? So, they put them on the floor to wash their hands. The bathroom passes acquire even more germs. And now the students with freshly cleaned hands are forced to pick up the germ-ridden passes, practically undoing the effect of washing their hands. That is, if kids actually wash their hands (p.s. if you don’t wash your hands after using the bathroom, please go back to Kindergarten to learn what germs are). The bathroom passes are brought back to the classroom to wait until the next student covers them with even more germs. It’s highly unsanitary. The majority of teachers don’t regularly clean the passes either (shoutout to Ms. Varano for being the only teacher I know of that does), and, even if they do, they’re not going to be cleaning it after every kid uses it.

The bathroom itself is also a breeding ground for germs. If you’re not feeling well and not headed to the nurse, where do you usually go? The bathroom, and in order to use the bathroom you need the bathroom pass. Sick kids are touching them and putting them back for other kids to touch. This would help explain the rapidness in the spreading of the cold.

I understand the purpose of bathroom passes, and, in theory, it’s a good idea. But they’re just nasty, and you can get the same effect by simply enforcing the sign-out sheets, a way more sanitary option.