The girls’ bathroom on the second floor of the north building is causing problems because of the small size of its stalls, making it difficult to get into the stall, especially with a backpack.

Students who have complained about this issue say that if they choose to bring their backpack into the stall, they have to play a game of twister just to fiddle their way in. However, if they leave it outside the stall, they run the risk of getting items stolen.

Junior Serena Braun struggles with the choice of taking or leaving her backpack because the stalls are “really small.” She said, “I think it’s really annoying that you can’t bring your backpack in the stall. If you do, it’s really hard to get in. You basically have to take it off, turn around, and back into it.”

Sophomore Miriam Rovin has been at this campus for less than two months, and she has already faced issues surrounding this bathroom.

Rovin expressed this problem and also brought up another issue: “Typically, if I use one of those bathrooms I just leave my backpack outside by the mirrors in the common area, which is fine, but 90% of the girls at this school have a black North Face backpack, so it’s very difficult to make sure you get the right one.”

Juniors Kelly Olvany and Julia Damen have a different perspective on the issue. Neither feel that this is a problem at our campus, and don’t feel strongly that this needs to be fixed.

Damen explained, “I haven’t had any problems with any bathrooms at New Trier. Now that you’re bringing it up, maybe I’ve noticed, but it’s not something that I feel is urgent or necessary to be taken care of.” Bringing up a similar point, Olvany said, “I have never noticed an issue with it. I don’t frequently use those bathrooms, but when I do I’ve never had a problem.”

Looking at first and third floor bathrooms, the width of the stalls are 31 inches and 33 inches, and although there was a tin for bathroom products, it did not cause any problems entering the stalls.

The bathroom stalls on the second floor of the north building have an actual width of 31 inches, but when entering in sideways (which is necessary when trying to get in), a person actually only has a mere 22 inches.

This is because the opened door and the bathroom products tin allow for a much narrower space because of their placement.

Given such a narrow space to enter, how much space would a student’s backpack take up in this stall? The measurements of the average length from a student’s shoulders to the end of their backpack is 20 inches. This only leaves 2 inches to get into the stall.

Student Alliance member Ilana Nazari acknowledged the issue and said, “I do know how impossible it is to get in, especially since my backpack is super wide because it has textbooks and binders in it.”

This wasn’t the first time she had heard from a student about a problem similar to this: “We have gotten some requests from other students in Student Alliance about bathrooms. Not those specifically but bathrooms in general, and we have been working with PPS to try to fix some of those. I totally see where this is coming from.”

Nazari explained that in Student Alliance, they bring the problems from the students to the people who are best suited to solve it. In this case, they can suggest the problem to PPS. Steve Linke, the Facilities Manager, explained what is being done on the administration level. He said that this particular bathroom is still original and was built in the 30s.

Linke explained, “that is why the doorways aren’t quite as wide as the newer ones. Anything that we renovate, we bring up to modern standards, so the doorways are wider.”

Though this restroom is not in the plan to be renovated in the next four years, Linke said, “We have been doing restroom work. We have just not gotten around to some of those in the north building. Restrooms that have not been renovated are on our radar.”