Washroom facilities at Shas Ti Kelly Road Secondary School have been vandalized by students since the start of the school year in September and school officials say the problem is directly tied to a TikTok/YouTube social media challenge that has caused similar problems at schools across North America.
The so-called “devious licks challenge” encourages students to damage sinks, toilets, soap and hand sanitizer dispensers and steal school property. School District 57 assistant superintendent Lee Karpenko says Shas Ti Kelly Road is not alone in having to deal with it.
“All of our secondary schools are reporting increased vandalism in the toilets, as a result of this challenge,” said Karpenko. (The problem) has been equal at all the schools. It’s probably more known (at Shas Ti Kelly Road) because of the size of the washroom and it’s easy to see several locked doors because of the proximity.
“It’s appalling that a challenge that comes from an outside social media source would then affect our schools and our students at our schools and our ability to service and support our schools through maintenance.”
STKR opened in September 2020 and all of its toilet stalls are in the gender-neutral washrooms completely enclosed by ceiling-to-floor doors. It gives vandals privacy while they go about breaking the handles of the toilets, leaving them unusable for other students. The school responded by closing the damaged stalls until they could be repaired and that prompted an online petition from students whose access to the toilets was compromised, resulting in lineups to use the few remaining operational toilets.
“They were having soap dispensers (removed), toilets busted and handles broken and, truly, they couldn’t keep up with the ability to keep the washrooms useable,” said Karpenko. “That’s why the stalls were locked; we were waiting for our facilities services department to come and fix them. Any time things were fixed, things became broken, and it was especially bad in the upstairs bathrooms at Shas Ti.”
Karpenko acknowledged the change.org petition launched earlier this week by STKR student Julia Elstad highlighted the problems associated with not having enough toilets to serve the students who attend the school and the school district acted on it.
“The petition was certainly an awareness for the principal to hear from the students how important it was to have access to washrooms and facilities services made it up Wednesday night and the washrooms were opened Thursday morning and so far (there’s been) no damage to the toilet facilities,” Karpenko said.
School staff have become more vigilant about monitoring washroom areas for suspicious activity but damage was still occurring as recently as this week. Karpenko is hoping increased awareness of the problem will result in students becoming more proactive in preventing acts of vandalism as a way of showing pride in their schools. He said nobody has yet been caught damaging washrooms.
Hallway surveillance cameras are in the schools in hallways next to washroom facilities. Karpenko said he wasn’t prepared to comment on how the cameras are used or where they are located.
At Terrace Secondary School, in response to a cluster of washroom vandalism incidents that started in September, school administration took the outer doors off its toilet facilities and since then there has been no further damage. Karpenko said removing doors is not being considered as a potential solution in SD 57 schools where most washrooms have angled walls at the entrances rather than doors.
