Students must take long treks across the school just to use the restroom, but WHY are they locked in the first place? In this article, I will interview, test, and more to find why this is happening, to save O. Henry Middle School from this terrible fate.

Before we even start testing or taking polls, let’s simply interview a few students so that we can make our hypothesis. We interviewed 11 students in Mr. Sobonya’s creative writing class and two 8th graders, for a total of 13 students. Most students seemed annoyed and agitated about how the restrooms are always locked. Noah, an 8th grader, stated, “IT’S MEAN!” showing clear agitation toward the topic. Parker A., a 6th grader, stated, “I think we should unlock them because kids got to use them. I don’t understand why they are locked.” This shows that they don’t understand WHY this is happening, but it really bothers them and their day-to-day life. Ella Miars and Josie Rocha, both 6th graders, even say they fear their teacher will get mad at them because the restroom is locked and they need to use one that is far away. Students should not be worried about their teacher getting mad because they simply need to use the restroom. Now that we know how they are feeling, why do they think it is happening? The students seemed to have two main hypotheses. The first one is that they are being vandalized, vaped in, etc., so the teachers must lock them until they can be cleaned. The second hypothesis is that the teachers don’t want to unlock them, are lazy, don’t want kids to use them because they want them for themselves, etc. The first hypothesis was way more popular, with about 75% of the students, while the more evil version, where the teachers are being selfish, only gained about 25%. A quote from Alex, an 8th grader who believed the restrooms were being vandalized, was, “They are running investigations because kids vape in there.” This shows that she believes it is the kids’ fault and not the teachers, just the teachers trying to protect the students. After careful thought, I decided my hypothesis was that they were being vandalized. I would now try to prove this. I will try to uncover the truth without bias, but this was just my original hypothesis. We will uncover so much more.

After interviewing the students, we decided to interview some employees. Most employees said that they thought it was that the restrooms were bei

ng vandalized, but didn’t know for sure. We interviewed person after person, then I interviewed Ms. Cassidy. She said that they are locked because, “They automatically lock and kids play pranks and kick them closed.” No one had said this before, so we decided to investigate it. We went restroom by restroom testing them. What we did was I would stand on the outside and my friend would stand on the inside. They would close them, and I would try to open it. If I couldn’t, it automatically locked. If I could, it did not. First, we did the 300s girls, which did not lock. Then the 600s girls, which did not lock. Then the 500s girls… which did not lock. We were starting to think this was a false lead, but then we tested the 100s girls… which locked! The 200s girls and the girls behind the gym automatically locked too! So we had proof that some auto-locked, which meant that Ms. Cassidy could be right! The only problem was we did not have a direct correlation between the restrooms being locked and them having auto-locking.

After some thought, we decided to interview people on what restrooms they think are most commonly locked. We interviewed all of Mr. Sobonya’s 5th period creative writing class. The graph of the results is shown somewhere. Here are the results in text form.

100s — 8 votes as most commonly locked Auto-locks

200s — 4 votes as most commonly locked Auto-locks

300s — 0 votes as most commonly locked, Does not auto-lock

400s — 2 votes as most commonly locked Not in chart because it can’t be tested since it only has boys’ restrooms Unknown

500s — 0 votes as most commonly locked Does not auto-lock

600s — 1 vote as most commonly locked Does not auto-lockBehind gym — 0 votes as most commonly locked not used very often Auto-locks

As you can see from this data, the 100s and 200s are locked the most, and those are two of the three that auto-lock. This means there is a correlation between the restrooms automatically locking and them being commonly locked. I could’ve stopped here and said this was the reason, but then there was the lone one vote for the 600s, and it was just screaming to be investigated. I decided that since I got my first lead interviewing employees, I should do that again.

I interviewed many employees, and they mostly said the same thing: that they were dirty and needed to be closed. I was about to give up and decide that the 600s just gets dirty often, but then I interviewed someone who said something that had never crossed my mind. They said that they must lock them during lunch since they have so many employees monitoring the cafeteria. They sometimes forget to unlock them.

This was a lead, so I decided to test this new lead. I interviewed all the kids in Mr. Sobonya’s creative writing 5th period class. I asked them what period they found the restrooms were most commonly locked. The data should be in a graph somewhere. Here are the results in text form:

1st — 1 vote
2nd — 1 vote
3rd — 0 votes
4th — 0 votes
5th — 6 votes
6th — 7 votes
7th — 5 votes
8th — 7 votes

As you can see, all of the restrooms seem to become locked after 4th period, in 5th period, and we have lunch in 5th period. So, most likely, it is true that they lock them at lunch and just forget to unlock them.

We have proved the automatic locking and the lunch lock, but we don’t know why periods one and two both have a vote. We interviewed some more teachers about why they think they are always locked, and they all said they were dirty. So, after some thought, I came to the conclusion that sometimes, they do get dirty.

So, in conclusion, there are three reasons why the restrooms are always locked. The first is that some automatically lock. The second is that they lock them at lunch and sometimes forget to unlock them. Finally, they sometimes get dirty. If we want the restrooms to stay unlocked, we need to not kick them closed or get them dirty. And maybe just go before 5th period.