The word “new” is often linked with improvement, change and joy. A new school year, while not always a source of joy, can bring improvement and change. In the case of FHS bathrooms, however, it seems that the new school year has not brought improvement, change or joy. Unidentifiable liquids, pungent odors and unflushed toilets continue to plague FHS’s desperate defecators.
While finding a good bathroom at FHS is quite the challenge, knowing where the least repulsive ones are can save you from a poopy predicament. To find the best bathrooms at FHS this year, we employed our patent-pending algorithm, the Cleanliness Rating And Potty Standards, or CRAPS, to score bathrooms not just on cleanliness and amenities but on opinions of FHS students. Ensuring that when nature calls, you feel relief, not regret.
Boys’ bathrooms are almost universally known as places of disease and despair. FHS bathrooms are no different. A few bathrooms in particular stand out as truly atrocious—using them would not just be unpleasant but could reasonably qualify as a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
The library bathroom has once again secured its place as one of FHS’ worst. The conversational urinals and stalls that do not consistently lock remain from last year, while the crowding seems to have only become worse. With more people using the bathroom, the overall cleanliness of the bathroom has gotten even worse.
“There’s f—ing piss on the floor. There’s hair on the floor. And first of all, it’s not a dude’s hair, I can tell you,” FHS senior and self-proclaimed “best school dumper” Rishav Singh said. “Honestly, it didn’t even look like hair from the head, you know.”
Even without the crowding, the bathroom seems to exude a sense of filth.
“It’s like the bathroom is trying to spread some kind of STD or mystery bacteria,” Singh said. “Get this cesspool out of my school. It’s basically a slip and slide in there.”
If the Library bathroom is a health hazard, the Lower B Boys’ bathroom is something far worse. Scoring more than 10 points lower than the library, it remains the undisputed bottom of Fremont’s already questionable barrel.
Like the library, its stalls rarely lock, leaving users with no real privacy. The urinals are arguably even worse than the library’s. Instead of being divider-free, the Lower B urinals come with incredibly short partitions that give the illusion of security, while providing none. These dividers also seem to collect a high amount of urine and offensive graffiti, creating a scene that attacks both your sense of smell and sight.
Crowding is also unusually high despite its location away from the center of campus. This is thanks to the security the bathroom’s layout provides to vapers. This school year, there have been increased efforts to crack down on vaping, with the Deans and Staff keeping bathroom doors propped open to discourage the practice—a method that seems to work for most FHS bathrooms. Due to the Lower B’s layout, with its narrow entryway that conceals the interior, the technique is ineffective. As a result, the bathroom has become a site of refuge. One anonymous student summarized the situation with a single word “Vapers.” Another said, “literally 10 vapers.”
The constant crowd has turned Lower B into a space that resembles a public square more than a bathroom.
“Haircuts, sports, you know, every colorful activity happens in that bathroom,” Singh said. “So if you want a good time, and an entertaining time go to the downstairs B building bathrooms, if you want to take a s— in peace, you’re not going to go [there].”
To make matters worse, the big stall has developed a thriving ant colony, with ants frequently crawling across the toilet seat. This presents a unique danger, as unsuspecting users may never know the true origins of the rash they are destined to leave with.
After trudging through the horrors of the Library and the chaos of the Lower B, it may seem like there really is not any hope for FHS boys to discard their dung in peace, but like a not quite shining beacon of porcelain hope emerges the Upper B bathroom. Having risen from positively mid to defecation destination, this bathroom has dethroned Lower A for a number of reasons.
Multiple factors earned Upper B this title. To start with, the dreaded stall gap that haunted users of the Lower A is absent here. The bathroom also smells shockingly decent, ironically, thanks to its shared vent system with Lower B. The vape fumes that poison one bathroom seem to improve the scent in the other, a rare instance of secondhand smoke being a blessing.
Crowding is also lower than other bathrooms, which means fewer messes and a more hygienic experience. Geoff Beckstrom, a history teacher at FHS, said that this is partially because loiterers do not get away with much upstairs.
“Oh, there’s a party in the bathroom. Look at all these guys who are gonna hold hands while you go to the bathroom. That’s so sweet,” he said. “No one is fooled by a crowd of dudes standing waiting to go into the stall all together, who all look side eye at me when I walk in. It’s just quite obvious.”
The only drawback is the sink situation, while there are technically two, one shuts off almost immediately, making it more decorative than functional.
While the boys’ bathrooms are war zones filled with chaos, filth, and questionable liquids, the girls’ bathrooms at FHS offer a slightly calmer experience. They are cleaner, less vandalized, and, to my knowledge, do not double as barbershops or sporting arenas. That said, being better than the boys’ bathrooms is a low bar to clear. The girls’ bathrooms come with their own set of flaws — from crowding to occasional horror stories that rival anything the boys endure.
“I went to one bathroom and I think there was vomit all over the wall,” FHS junior Aasha Krishnan said. “The smell was really bad. Like, I can’t even explain how bad it was. Like it was actually going into my brain. It was so bad.”
Despite horror stories like Krishnan’s, FHS girls also seem to be far more critical of their bathrooms than the boys. This disparity is best illustrated in the CRAPS reviews’ comments, such as “waiting for a friend” or “water pressure is hell,” which resulted in bathrooms being graded Cs, while boys’ reviews citing “gooning” or even “orange peels and s— in an unflushed toilet” somehow earned those bathrooms A’s and B’s respectively.
This higher standard has not spared the girls’ 80s bathroom. In a drastic fall from last year’s second place, the bathroom is now ranked among the worst. Its decline is almost entirely due to crowding. The constant influx of students has not only made the space unbearable to use but has also worsened the smell, making it one of the foulest-smelling girls’ bathrooms at FHS.
The crowds have also brought the overall cleanliness down, while leaving students unable to properly wash up.
“There’s no soap, no seat covers or hygiene products,” said an anonymous FHS student.
What was once one of FHS’s finest has now become a cautionary tale in how quickly a bathroom can fall from grace.
For the second year in a row, the Lower A bathroom has claimed the title of worst girls’ bathroom at FHS. Last year, it was criticized for its rancid smell, its occasional toilet papier-mâché decor and lack of stalls. This year, CRAPS data has only cemented its position at the bottom.
With just three stalls — still the fewest of any girls’ bathroom on campus — crowding remains the bathroom’s defining issue. The odor, already infamous, was ranked the worst of any girls’ bathroom and the overall cleanliness has dropped even further. Amenities like toilet paper, seat covers and hand dryers appear inconsistently at best, and the lack of hand dryers forces students to choose between wet hands or dirty ones.
Compared to other girls’ bathrooms, Lower A continues to lag far behind. It is not completely unusable, but the experience is almost guaranteed to be unpleasant. For now, it remains FHS’s worst, a reminder that big crowds and few stalls are a recipe for disaster.
While many FHS bathrooms feel like punishment, the girls’ Upper B bathroom stands out, not just as the best girls’ bathroom, but as the best bathroom in the entire school that is open during regular hours. The CRAPS algorithm ranks it the best in cleanliness, smell and crowding. The floors are usually clear of toilet paper tumbleweeds and the amenities are consistently stocked, seat covers, toilet paper, soap, hygiene products and even hand dryers that actually work. Compared to the gamble of other bathrooms, the reliability and consistency of Upper B feels revolutionary.
As with most things, the state of FHS’s bathrooms is ever-changing, shaped by crowd sizes, unflushed turds and animals that may decide to take up residence. A pristine bathroom one morning could be a cesspool of STDs and bacteria by lunch. In the end, using the bathrooms at FHS is not always about comfort, but instead about which biohazard you are most comfortable with.
