A petition on Change.Org to reinstall the outer doors on the school bathrooms, started by Oak Park and River Forest High School Junior Laila Rosenthal, has garnered much attention, with close to 11,900 signatures at the time of writing. 

“I just think it is a basic privacy and safety violation of all the students, and I also feel like it’s a choice that students should have had a decision in making,” Rosenthal said. 

The doors were removed over the summer in response to a wide range of concerns about vaping and student safety. It is not possible to see directly into the area with stalls and urinals, and no stall doors have been removed.  

According to Devitt, the idea to remove the doors is connected to a concept called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, or CPTED. The idea, she says, is to design and modify a building or place in such a way to prevent unwanted behavior in that place. 

Closed doors make it easier for students to engage in illicit activities, said David Narain, OPRF’s Assistant Principal of Operations. “We’re following the model that is already in existence in many, many other schools, including other suburban districts,” he added.

“Some students were saying that kids were going into restrooms and not using the restrooms, and cluttering up the space by doing Tiktok dances, some participating in other activities that everybody knows you shouldn’t,” Narain said.

Rosenthal’s petition gained public attention after it was covered by a variety of news sources. These include a Chicago Tribune article published on Aug. 26, a CBS article published on the same date, and an article in People Magazine published on Aug. 28. Likely because of the media attention, the petition has far more signatures than there are students at OPRF. The student population at OPRF is about 3,250.

The school has tried other methods to combat vaping in particular. According to Narain, the school tested the use of vape detectors in the bathrooms in the 2023-2024 school year under a previous campus safety director, but the cost of this was too high for it to be a long-term solution.

“That is some very good, but also very expensive technology. So that is a question that some people are still interested in pursuing…I can tell you that that would be something that the Board of Education would have to weigh in on, because the cost to the district would be immense,” he said. 

The removal of the doors was a cheaper and simpler option. Removing the doors “doesn’t cost us any additional money, but it also gives us that natural surveillance… we can see if there’s smoke, we can see if there’s a ton of people in the bathroom, we can hear the noise that they’re making, all of those things,” said Devitt.

Administrators say they are still taking student privacy into account. “There’s a handful of [bathrooms] that if we were to take the doors off, you could see either a stall or a urinal or through a mirror, and we did not remove those doors,” Devitt said.

Students had mixed feelings about the new arrangement.

“Well, personally, the bathroom doors haven’t really affected me all that much,” said Reyes Pineda Rothstein, an OPRF senior. “However, it would be selfish to say, like, ‘It doesn’t bother me, so there’s no problem.’ I’ve definitely heard it’s been bothering other students, mainly some students are worried about people peeping into the bathrooms…I think there’s this whole expectation of privacy thing that needs to be sorted out quickly.” 

Devitt, however, emphasized that her personal experience with student feedback since the decision has been mostly positive. “I know that there are people who are unhappy about it, and I’ve seen things posted on social media and news stories, but the feedback that we’re actually getting inside the building is that it’s been positive for the people who are saying something to us.” 

Narain mentioned that along with concerns about vaping, male-identifying students in girls’ bathrooms was also an issue that had been complained about. 

“Behavior in those restrooms was not always, it was definitely not making girls in particular feel safe because there was some rough housing going on,” Narain said. “It wasn’t always all wild fights, but it was just kids playing around in a way that shouldn’t happen anywhere, let alone in a restroom while somebody’s just trying to use the facilities and get to class.” 

Students have also raised doubts about the effectiveness of this as a strategy to combat vaping. 

“I don’t even think it’s going to stop anyone from vaping,” freshman Silas Panall said. “They can just go in the stalls.” He also said that he has experienced students using the stalls to vape.

Narain admits the model is not perfect, and that some students will try to find ways around it. But, he said, “I would say, as an educator, I’d rather know that a student is vaping, get them that the support that they need, which might be some counseling, which might be just being educated on the dangers of vaping and what they’re doing to their own body, whatever it means. If it’s never addressed, never caught, we don’t have an opportunity to educate a kid, right?”