Dear Sharkie,

Why were the bathroom mirrors removed?  Can you help us get them back?

Sincerely,

Anonymous Student

Dear Anonymous Student,

As you all may know, a little over a year ago, all of the mirrors in the student bathrooms were taken down. Well, after asking the AP’s and staff, the “justified” reason for doing so was: to prevent vandalism of the mirrors and to reduce the amount of tardies. I, along with many students, believe the mirrors should be returned for a litany of reasons.

1. A handful of students go to the bathroom to clean up a bloody nose, to adjust their physical appearance, etc. and it is pretty difficult to do so without a mirror in the bathroom.
2. Vandalism is inevitable. Unfortunately, there is always going to be immature students in a school, and they are going to do what they want to do; however, we should not let that discourage us from installing mirrors in the bathrooms again. Students do prefer any mirror over no mirrors at all.
3. Tardiness is a personal problem- you cannot point to the mirrors as a scapegoat for the tardies.
4. Other high schools and middle schools of the CNUSD have mirrors in their bathrooms! If young middle-schoolers have mirrors in their bathrooms, and we don’t, what does that say about us? Are we really incapable of handling mirrors while middle school students are? How embarrassing. Also, Centennial has large scale mirrors in their bathrooms, and Norco and Corona High have the mirrors that we used to have, we should be on par with them on every level- even better than them.
5. Studies show that many students tend to perform better in the classroom when they believe they look well, the saying “look good, play good” applies here, but instead it’s: “look good, learn good”.
6. Lack of mirrors in the bathrooms prevents creative expression.
7. Lack of mirrors in the bathrooms depicts the school as poor, as if the school can’t afford it.
8. It also provides a depressing environment for the bathroom, it is similar to the environment of a room with no windows (which is illegal).

There are a lot more reasons why the mirrors should be returned to us, the students. The students want their mirrors back, and for further study, I asked fifty students if they believed the mirrors should be reinstalled into the bathrooms…

The large majority at thirty-eight students had said the mirrors should be returned.

Eight students had said no, the mirrors should not be returned.

And four other students had said they simply do not care.

Thirty-eight of the fifty said the mirrors should be returned, that is 76%. When the 76% is applied to the total of 3,638 students that attend Santiago High School, it shows that 2,765 students want the mirrors back, while 582 students disagree and 291 students do not mind if the mirrors are returned or not. Not only this, but the U.S. believes strongly in democracy, and in democracy, the majority rules.

Give the students their mirrors back!

Yours Truly,

Sharkie