The past month of school has seemed to spark a large amount of vandalism in the bathrooms of Harding. The damage has taken many forms from stealing soap dispensers, egging restrooms, and creating relatively harmless graffiti to more dangerous ones like hosting fights between students. Recently, student even went as far as to start a fire in a bathroom.
This wave of vandalism is part of a new and viral trend at Harding known as the “devious lick.” This is a TikTok “trend” where students break, steal, and vandalize school equipment like soap dispensers, mirrors, and stalls.
The trend's explosion in popularity has caused large amounts of vandalism in the restrooms of Harding up to the point where not even Principal Musbach can keep up with how many bathrooms have been closed at a time. When asked what the record for most shut down bathrooms at a time was she responded by saying “I actually don't know that answer.”
Students are ultimately forced to pay for this damage. One student points out “...I gotta go all around the building to find out which restroom is open to actually use…” This also has the secondary effect of keeping kids outside of the classroom for longer periods of time.
Additionally, bathrooms have had to be closed for long stretches of time. In some cases even being closed after repairs have been finished in an attempt to control the vandalism. This only adds to the other problems caused by this destruction.
An interesting side effect of this increase in defacing of school property is that men seem to be disproportionately affected at times, having multiple bathrooms shutdown or impaired. When asked about the discrepancy, Principal Musbach says, “All I can go on is the data that I have, and the data tells me that there's more destruction in the men's restrooms.”
Students seem to have their own opinions on the problem stating that “men are more childish than women '' and theorizing that “...it has to do with the strength of the individual that's able to dismantle and pull some of this stuff off the walls…” The most common theory regarding the issue however is that men aren't necessarily the group responsible, but that the freshmen or underclassmen are. There does not appear to be any evidence to back up this claim.
The school is thankfully taking steps to try and improve the problem. Meetings are being held with all grade levels to remind them to act with common sense, trusted upperclassmen are being recruited as hall monitors, and HQ teachers are checking in on students weekly in order to make sure that the vandalism isn't a result of pent up anger or frustration.
Students can help control the situation by alerting teachers of the vandalism as soon as possible, contacting your study hall teacher about being a hall monitor, and leading the underclassmen by example.
