Open-stall Policy Halts Marion School Graffiti

A principal warns students that if they didn't stop vandalizing the stalls in the bathrooms that he would take the stall doors down.  They didn't stop.  So he took the doors down.  Now the parents are all up in arms that their kids don't have privacy...even though one stall door was left up in each bathroom.  What do you think? I remember none of the stalls in my  bathroom high school had doors.  If you had to deuce it up you did it during class.  But that's my view.  What do you think?

When several attempts to deter graffiti artists in the girls’ restroom at Marion School failed, the principal tried a new tactic: removing the stall doors.

The strategy has seemed to work; the bathroom has been graffiti-free for two weeks. But some parents say the move violated their children’s right

to privacy.

Removing the stall doors wasn’t Principal Justin Barnes’ first attempt to dissuade the vandals.

Students were required to take a buddy to the bathroom so no one was in there alone. Teachers checked the restroom every 15 minutes. Students were asked about possible offenders, and children whose names cropped

up more than once were questioned.

Weeks went by. Despite the school’s efforts, profane words continued to appear, carved into the bathroom stall.

The carvings were so deep that merely painting over them couldn’t completely hide them, Barnes said. The school likely will have to sandblast the stalls over the summer to get rid of the etchings.

Finally, after other efforts to stop the graffiti proved fruitless, Barnes tried a new tactic.

“I went to every class but the kindergartners, because what was written was not written by kindergartners,” Barnes said at a crowded school board meeting Wednesday night. “I told them there would be consequences.”

Those consequences involved removing the doors from all but one stall in the restroom if the graffiti continued.

It did.

“I thought someone would call my bluff,” Barnes said.

Because graffiti also had appeared in the boys’ restroom, all but one stall

in that facility lost its doors as well. Barnes told students that if they could go one week without vandalizing the bathroom, the doors would be returned.

The doors were put back Monday, two weeks after they had been taken down.

Despite that, several outraged parents and community members spoke Wednesday during the board meeting’s public comment period.

Trina Huffman called the “extreme measure to combat graffiti unacceptable.” Removing the doors was a “gross infringement of children’s rights,” she added.

As evidence, she cited Article II, Section 10 of the Montana Constitution, which says, “The right of individual privacy is essential to the well-being of a free society and shall not be infringed without the showing of a compelling state interest.”

Huffman also cited Article II, Section 15 of the state Constitution, which says children are entitled to the same rights as adults.

Tim Baldwin, an attorney and son of former Constitution Party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin, also spoke about students’ rights. He said he was at the meeting not because anyone had hired him but because he was concerned about the message removing the stall doors had conveyed to children.

Especially because schools are run by the government, school officials “should be thinking about the constitutional rights of everybody,” he said. Otherwise, “children learn that the Constitution really doesn’t matter.”

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