Locker room accessibility during class has been shut down — here’s why. At the end of August, an announcement was made notifying everyone that the locker rooms had been closed during class time. This decision was made by the Physical Education teacher Belinda Hayes because she says students had been doing things such as vaping and stealing other students’ belongings, “We had to shut down the locker rooms because people were doing things in the locker room that you’re not supposed to do in the locker room. We had some vaping going on, and we had some thefts, so we had to shut the locker room,” said Hayes.

Hayes takes a hard stance on vaping, “I don’t understand why people vape because it probably is more dangerous than cigarettes. You’re taking formaldehyde, which is what is used to preserve bodies, and putting it in your lungs.” She also worries that the nicotine market has targeted teenagers, “because they know that teenagers will use it. So they’re looking for teenagers to become addicted. And that’s their life because you guys are going to be busy paying their paycheck.”

Hayes explains why she shut the lockers down altogether instead of punishing the few who misbehaved, “The real issue is that we don’t know all the time who does it. And there’s obviously no cameras in the locker room so it makes it very difficult to pinpoint who’s actually in there doing what they’re not supposed to do.” She says because no one came forward, “Everybody blames everybody else or nobody wants to snitch or whatever it is that they call that which means that we don’t know who does it all the time so we have to close the whole thing to everybody.”

Junior Matthew Dreiling thinks closing the locker rooms is a good decision, “Because the locker rooms are just like a bathroom that’s hidden off so people can just mess around and kind of get away with whatever they want in there.”  Student Ethan Brown said he takes everything with him, “I don’t really use lockers much during the day so it doesn’t really matter to me.”

There is no set date for the reopening of the lockers.