In the typical boys’ bathroom at LB, five urinals are located against the wall with pencils, highlighters, erasers, pieces of gum, feces, lunchboxes or some other kind of obstruction on top of the urinal sponge. During bathroom primetime, particularly between classes, students can be found at the far left, far right and center urinals while other students await their turns by the sink. The two other urinals remain unused unless one brave soul decides to create an awkward tension by taking one of them When this happens, he and those next to him must determinedly stare straight ahead at the wall, not looking to their side at all costs lest they catch an eyeful of another that they probably never wanted to see. This is because it seems that in the infinite wisdom of the building’s interior designers, the decision that the boys’ bathrooms did not need dividers between the urinals was made so the money could be spent on more important things like TVs that are never on.

This is a grievous violation of one of the most sacred rules of bro bathroom etiquette: the 24-inch rule, otherwise known as the buffer urinal rule. Two males peeing within a foot of each other is awkward and weird. It makes many students uncomfortable and causes them to have trouble doing what they came to do. Also, if somebody tries to engage in urinal talk, the thin bonds of respect and compassion that our school holds sacred snap to pieces. Because proper etiquette heavily discourages use of all the urinals, the boys’ bathrooms will never be able to achieve close to maximum efficiency while there is a lack of urinal dividers. Males are actively encouraged not to use the urinals efficiently due to the lack of dividers, and this isn’t going to change anytime soon.

Whether divider-less urinals work in ballparks, restaurants or other places is irrelevant. Our school is not one of those places where the majority of people using the bathrooms are adults; the population using the urinals is made up of teenage boys going through puberty and the awkwardness that goes with it. Self-confidence is shaky at this stage in life, and the state of the urinals does nothing to improve this dilemma. The chance of being observed like a specimen during one of the most private things one should be doing at school is incredibly off-putting, and it can cause anxiety to build up. Some will actively try to avoid the bathroom during primetime because it affects them so badly.

Furthermore, this awkward inefficiency encourages males to use the stall instead of the urinal, which leads to everyone knowing exactly how your business is or is not going. This also leads to a problem even more dreaded than the divider problem: You open the stall door, and you encounter a toilet covered in liquid. You don’t want to think about what this fluid is, yet, you already know. Everyone fears this, yet it happens, without fail, every day here.

So why has this atrocity never been addressed? Is it because anyone who has the power to change this debauchery doesn’t have to brave the horrors of the boys’ bathroom? Are they silently laughing at all us poor male students? If schools like West Springfield manage to have dividers between their urinals, how has Lake Braddock failed to achieve this simple and necessary installation?