Why are there no doors on the bathroom stalls in some schools?

Are you referring to men’s bathrooms? Why not ask the admin?

The only time I can remember no doors on bathroom stalls was when I was in kindergarten. We had to go to the bathroom in pairs and I guess they kept the locks off in case someone had an emergency? Of if the child didn’t know how to use the lock? (As reference, I was in kindergarten in 1995.)

I don’t see why any school post-kindergarten wouldn’t have doors and locks on the stalls. However, it’s not uncommon for the locks to be all but busted..

@gailcalled True, I’ve only been in men’s rooms. I’ve only ever seen it at those schools, which is why I felt it was a school-related thing. I’ve never seen it anywhere else.

Maybe it’s to keep kids from going in stalls and doing drugs or having sex.

Kids smoke in the stalls. Kids lock the door and crawl out underneath, making it a pain to unlock. Kids write on the walls. Kids have sex in the stalls. Kids stand on the toilet and hide from teachers.

That’s off the top of my head. It’s been a long time since I was a kid, and I’m sure they have myriad other ways to misbehave in there.

@chyna and @jaytkay both got it; it’s to prevent discipline problems.

I remember thirty years ago when cocaine was rampant, walking into the bathroom and hearing a razor blade choosing on the TP dispenser, and two sets of shoes visible under the stall door.

There was a time it was just smoking in the rest room. Times have changed.

I don’t get why any of the concerns listed above would necessitate removing the doors. Surely removing the locks would be effective enough, while allowing the kids to have their privacy. I find it worrying.

We didn’t have doors on the toilets in my elementary school. A kid in my class told me how he refused to go at school, so his mom would give him laxatives when he got home.

I told my parents about it because I had no idea what a laxative was and they raised a couple hundred dollars at the next school carnival, ordered and installed the doors themselves. There weren’t any objections that I remember, it was just an old old school and it had never been taken care of.

It’s probably not a budget priority without someone at least asking. Students spend way too much time there for it not to be private and someone just needs to bring it up and make it happen.

One of those things you don’t appreciate about your parents when you’re 10, but makes you really appreciate them when you’re older.

That’s a good point @dappled_leaves. My initial thought was that it dissuaded people from doing business, so less clean up or maintenance problems.

@dxs Haha – well, I imagine just removing the bathrooms altogether would solve those problems! We shouldn’t give them any ideas, I suppose.

@funkdaddy Your parents are awesome!

This seems weird. I’d be interested to hear the responsible people’s reasoning.

@dappled_leaves Nah, that’ll shift the blame entirely onto the establishment.

The only places I’ve been to with no stall doors was a camp run by YWCA and an RV campground.

I attended a few different schools, but only one did not have doors on the stalls. That was a K-6 school. Somehow I’m guessing sex, smoking or cocaine wasn’t a big problem at that school. I believe the more likely reason was simply that the school was too cheap to have new doors installed. This same school also opted to forgo the expense of paper towels in the restrooms, choosing instead one of those dealies that’s a single cloth towel looped on a roller (we finally got a paper towel dispenser when some kid a grade above me tried to hang himself on the cloth towel).

They probably think if a young child needs help they don’t want the teacher to have to crawl under the door.

The school I first went to K-5 had a single bathroom in the classroom in my kindergarten room. I don’t remember if we had them in every classroom in that school.

^ The doors wouldn’t need to have locks. Also, there are those locks which can be opened from the outside, using a coin.

You don’t need a coin. There are “locks” easily opened from the outside.

Maybe they are concerned very little kids just will
Have trouble with the locks.

^^^ Which would be an argument for not having locks, not for not having doors.

@Darth_Algar Exactly. It’s not complicated.

There’s also a vandalism problem. I can imagine an administrator stopping door replacement after the little monsters wreck a few.

@jaytkay I agree, vandalism is a more likely reason. It would be interesting to actually pursue it with the schools, and see if they had the same concerns.

@Darth_Algar Thanks, that’s what I was trying to say.

No excuse for no doors for stalls.

I personally agree there should be doors. I’m just giving possible reasons a school might give, even if it is total bullshit realistically.

My daughter’s elementary school has one bathroom with no door on the single stall. My assumption was that it’s to accomodate wheelchairs. There is a side of the stall, so it’s not like the bathroom was built as a single person room. It seems it was intended to be a one stall bathroom but then they later removed the stall door. All the other bathrooms in her school have stall doors. Other high schools I go to for our organization’s meetings have stall doors too.

The handicapped deserve privacy too. A public funded (or not) institution should have a handicapped stall.

@flo: I am not disagreeing with you. I am just guessing at why the single use bathroom I am referring to has no door. However, since it is a single use bathroom, there is privacy as there would only be one person in it at a time.

@jca If the school otherwise has doors on their stalls, I have a feeling it might just be a damaged door that they’re taking their time replacing. Perhaps they could stand to have a little pressure put on them – it kind of sounds like they might be inviting a lawsuit by ignoring the privacy of handicapped kids.

@dappled_leaves: Like I said, the bathroom itself is a single stall with a locking door on the outside. Only one person would be in it. I go in it all the time and I don’t care that there’s no door on the stall because I am the only person in there, and the main door is locked. In other words, if a handicapped kid goes in there, they have 100% privacy.

@jca Oh, I see. That really wasn’t clear in your previous post – thanks for the clarification.

@jca I was addressing the subject in general. I didn’t think you were justifying it.

But in any case even if you are refferiing to one toilet room not just one stall out of a row stalls in one bathroom, it still leaves the person with no privacy doesn’t it?

@flo The handicapped person can lock the door.

@jca and @JLeslie
”...has one bathroom with no door on the single stall.”
”...a locking door on the outside.
I am not getting it. Maybe after a day or 2.

There is a single person bathroom, @flo. It has the remnants of a stall in it, being the side of a stall but no door. There is a door from the hall into the bathroom. That door has a lock on it. I thought I described it adequately in my previous several comments. The person goes into this single use bathroom and locks the door. Nobody else can come in. That’s privacy, 100%.

@flo The stall probably originally had a door and then to meet new codes for ADA needed to be removed. The stall wall is still up. Now, instead of locking a stall door, the main door locks like any typical single bathroom. They maintained the privacy, it’s just now only one person can be in there while previously there could me more than one.

Ohhhhh. Okay. Thanks you both. I was thinking locking the door from the outside. How do you lock a door from the outside? And if there is a door then is a door etc.

Interesting discussion. Like @dappled_leaves, I’m still not buying into the reasons for the lack of stalls. Oddly enough, I was in a bathroom the other day that had a separate stall for a urinal. I definitely like my privacy, but this seemed lavish.
lavish…hahaha

@dxs I never understood men peeing in front of each other. I guess men who need privacy can always use a regular toilet in a stall, but I guess that’s like announcing I’m taking a crap, even if you aren’t.

I think multiple papers could be written on the complicated behavior patterns and etiquette of urinal selection. Men are weird in the bathroom.

So if someone is already at a urinal, and you would have to take a urinal right next to them, then you should jump to a stall. But of course, only if there’s more than one stall open. You don’t want some poor bastard that has to poop to have wait on you just so the guy at urinal #1 doesn’t get freaked out.

Spacing rules do not apply to stalls, unless said stall has no door, and then you do everything possible to not walk past, exposing that poor, vulnerable, soul.

So no doors really breaks down the whole system. It just becomes like a disturbed ant pile, rapid, awkward, milling bodies everywhere. Each trying not to make eye contact or touch each other in any way.

I’m only mostly joking

@funkdaddy And thus, children will not learn this standard restroom etiquette having no stalls in schools.

Lol.

I have no idea. Seems an extreme measure for a minor ideal to me, but then again, removing a stall door doesn’t require a whole lot.

Yeah, in middle school it was very weird because we would have to take showers naked at the same time. And the stalls were open, so it sucked.