As many recall from the beginning of the school year, Somerset Berkley was not immune from the viral Tik Tok trend referred to as “devious licks”. The trend involved high school students who would steal from their school and post video evidence of their stolen goods to Tik Tok. This quickly became a competition all throughout the country to see who could steal the most outrageous items, such as personal belongings of teachers, desks, or even projectors. Here at Somerset Berkley, most of the stealing was confined to the bathroom, with soap dispensers being the number one target. The trend seemed to die down, but the behavior in Somerset Berkley bathrooms hasn’t necessarily stopped. While theft hasn’t been as prominent of an issue, the bathrooms have been experiencing a whole new type of chaos.

This year, multiple Instagram accounts have been created surrounding the bathrooms at Somerset Berkley. One page featured an assortment of oddities, including pictures of whole paper towel rolls stuck into a toilet, and soap dispersed all over the bathroom floors. The other bathroom-related page featured pictures of peoples’ shoes taken from underneath the bathroom stall. Some posts to this page featured content that was managed to somehow be even more inappropriate than the photos of unknowing peoples’ feet. One post featured an image of two people’s feet in one stall with some rather unsavory comments speculating as to why two people were in the stall at once. Two videos were also uploaded to the account which featured the shadows of people committing unwholesome acts in the school bathroom. 

Aside from these online issues, there have been more problems reported from within the bathrooms at Somerset Berkley. Whenever a student enters the bathroom, there is a good chance that someone has ripped off one of the valves you push down to turn on the water flow leaving the spring it rests on exposed. There have also been multiple reported fights that have occurred in the school bathrooms in recent times. These issues, as childish and odd as they may sound, are becoming prominent and they highlight key dilemmas with the current state of our student body. 

Administration has been alerted of all incidents and has begun their response. On December 6th, Dr. Brelsford sent out an email to the school in which she addressed the Instagram accounts surrounding the school bathrooms. She wrote, “We have already contacted Instagram in an attempt to retrieve information on who has created these accounts and, if and when we find this information out, we will be moving forward with discipline, as well as legal repercussions, if the situation warrants.” She also gave out a warning to the owners of the accounts saying, “Please take them down immediately.  If you do not, and we are able to locate the owners, we will be taking serious disciplinary action, as well as involving police, if necessary.” This statement seemed to be effective as content has been taken down and the accounts have not posted since this email had been sent out. 

Even though these accounts have been managed, what does it say about our student body that we had such an account gain such traction in the first place? The same thing goes for the issues of vandalism and general poor bathroom behavior. How is it that we have turned something as simple as using the restroom into a whole dilemma that could potentially involve legal repercussions?