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By: Hannah Ahn

MRHS’s new bathroom policy proves to be pretty crappy.

   Consider this: a bowl of bagels sits on a table in the middle of an office breakroom. A sign next to the bowl reads: One Dollar Per Bagel. Employees are free to take a bagel and pay for it by putting a dollar inside a jar. There is no clerk, no cashier. The act of payment rests on the informal honor system. In what context do you think people are more likely to honestly pay for bagels? In a smaller office, where there are less people around, or a larger office, where employees are constantly coming in and out of the break-room? Intuitively, most people say a larger office: after all, someone is more likely to spot you stealing. 

   This example is taken from the book Freakonomics, and what the study found was that in a smaller office, people were much more likely to pay for their bagels. The human psychology behind this is simple: because in smaller group settings, you feel much more exposed. Who cares if a stranger from the eighth floor sees you stealing a bagel? You work on the fourth. You’ll never see them again. But if Jim from the cubicle across from yours spots you thieving a bagel? You have to make eye contact with him every day. You’ll feel a prickle of shame every time, knowing he remembers you as the Miserly Bagel Thief. 

   I use the seemingly unrelated example of economics because economic theory is not so much the exploration of money as it is the exploration of human behavior. How do humans behave when they are merely nameless statistics within a larger population? Under what conditions are they more likely to adhere to rules? 

   Last week, Marriotts Ridge instituted a new, school-wide policy: all bathroom breaks had to be under five minutes. Principal DiPaula, announcing the order over the loudspeakers, said something interesting: that this policy was due to a small, unnamed population within the school, who were taking advantage of bathroom breaks. It was not, he emphasized, reflective of the greater student culture within Marriotts Ridge. 

   This policy is an example of collective punishment, or where an entire population is punished for the actions of a small minority. It’s outlawed by the Geneva Convention, but is utilized frequently in real life: by kindergarten teachers who take away recess for the whole class when a pair of best friends can’t stop talking, or a football coach who makes the entire team run laps because the kicker mouthed off to a teacher. Collective punishment works to a degree in settings like the military and sports, where it’s utilized to enforce the idea that in a team, the collective is responsible for the acts of the individual. But does it work on, say, a population of nearly two thousand kids in a public high school? 

   My answer is simple. No. 

   I utilize the bagel example because it shows that the greatest incentive of collective punishment is shame. The risk of you stealing a bagel is forever feeling ashamed around a colleague, and the reward is getting to keep a dollar. Most people would choose to fork over the dollar. When Coach makes you run suicides, the whole team socially isolates the perpetrator afterwards. Thus, he’s much less likely to repeat bad behavior. But in a school setting, where the main offenders go unnamed and remain faceless, it’s impossible to facilitate this element of shame. Thus, the punishment mechanism fails. In fact, collective punishment can often produce counterproductive results. Teachers, busy with delivering lessons, may find it overwhelming to keep track of every person who exits the room, thus making it even more burdensome than originally to crack down on surreptitious skippers. As the attention span of authority figures expands to focus on a much larger population, it consequently becomes more difficult to keep track of anyone’s behavior. 

   So what’s the solution? The solution is targeted punishment. Marriotts Ridge indeed has an epidemic of students who view going to the toilet as vacation time and bathrooms as luxury lounges. The result is lost learning, widespread frustration, and teachers wondering if they might have to start taking attendance in the stalls. But collective punishment isn’t just unfair- it’s deeply ineffective. By targeting all students, blanket policies make it harder to identify and address the underlying issues associated with such misbehavior, such as attention disorders, vaping, or vandalism. Targeting discipline for students with repeated histories of misusing bathroom privileges, on the other hand, allows educators to identify the specific reasons behind a student’s behavior. This individualized approach enables more effective interventions and support, addressing the root causes rather than punishing everyone indiscriminately.

   I’ve heard many students complaining about the bathroom policy in recent days. Some are confident it will be unenforceable and ultimately remain another futile policy, citing the inability of teachers to pause lessons to play bathroom bounty hunter. Others say it feels increasingly authoritarian and infantilizes students, some of whom are legal adults, reducing them to individuals who cannot even go to the bathroom without being monitored. Some girls I’ve spoken to have expressed concerns about managing periods and the embarrassment of having to disclose personal bodily information. The bladders of innocent students have become collateral damage, held hostage by truant classmates. As senior Jaidyn Augustine succinctly said, “What about people with IBS?” 

   Ultimately, I think F. Scott Fitzgerald said it best in The Great Gatsby. Character Jordan Baker says, “I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties, there isn’t any privacy.” 

   While I understand administrators are trying to crack down on bathroom parties, their efforts may be misguided. Anonymity and privacy are privileges reserved for people who use bathrooms for their intended function. Instead of focusing on outlawing the toilets, focus on putting a name to toilet outlaws. Only then do I believe classroom seats will have a higher tenancy rate than bathroom stalls.