A school in New York decided that their student council needed to do something about the appearance of the bathrooms in their school. The student council decided to have a competition between various groups in the school (leadership forum, Honors Society, Captain’s Club, FHA, sports groups, etc) to clean up their school bathrooms. Each club volunteered to pay for the refurbishing of a bathroom. One week a month a bathroom would be shut down for the work to be done. The groups cleaned up the bath- rooms by painting, putting up wall paper & borders, sponge painting, putting up new mirrors and soap dispensers, hanging fake plants from the ceiling, getting new toilet seats and doors, etc. In some bathrooms a magazine rack was put in to hold donated magazines. Other clubs were creative and had shop class students make shelves to set your books on while using the restroom. Art classes even volunteered to paint murals on the walls!! Since the students were the ones that cleaned up the bathrooms and put the effort into it, they wanted them to STAY CLEAN, so were less apt to destroy their hard work. When damage was done it was that clubs responsibility to do the clean up work in the bathroom each month (painting touch ups, etc), but the normal bathroom cleaning was still done by janitors. At first people had a hard time respecting the new bathrooms, but after a month of the many students yelling at them for ruining their work. Damage stopped and bathrooms became a much more pleasant place – SHOCKER HUH?!?!
Tonya Chmielewski