Last year, Archbishop Riordan High School implemented a new policy known as the “15-minute rule.” This policy, as I’m sure many students and faculty are aware of, prohibits students from using the bathroom during the first and last 15 minutes of class. Although this policy made sense last year during our lengthy 10-minute passing periods, our schedule change has made this rule much less effective.
The “15-minute rule” was originally created last year to prevent students from missing too much important class time. With 10-minute passing periods, students had ample time to use the bathroom, even considering the long lines. So, during the first 15 minutes of class, it didn’t make much sense to let students miss class to go to the bathroom again.
Faculty also argued that the last 15 minutes of class time were often spent talking about homework and wrapping up the class, which is often true for most of the classes here at Riordan. Therefore, it was unreasonable to let students miss vital class time to go to the bathroom when they could have easily gone before or after.
However, with our passing periods returning to their normal five-minute length this year, it seems necessary that other rules should change along with them. Our passing periods going back to normal was an important step considering our new schedule changes, but now that the time between classes is much shorter, students have less time to use the facilities.
Students often have classes on opposite sides of the school or have to access their lockers to get heavy textbooks for their next block. Students who have to use the bathroom in addition to these other tasks will most likely be late for class.
We should also take into consideration the amount of time it takes students to wait in line to go to the bathroom. Even if students don’t use their locker and their classes are all in the same hallway, it would still be quite a struggle to get to class on time if they had to use the bathroom.
On average, the line for the girl’s bathroom takes around four minutes during passing periods. This amount of time would have been doable during our longer passing periods, but now it’s almost impossible to use the bathroom on time. Taking away the “15-minute rule” would fix this problem easily.
Most students already use the restroom during class time instead of during passing periods because of these preexisting problems. If students were allowed to use the restroom during the first 15 minutes of class, they would be able to pay more attention during the rest of class time, instead of counting the minutes until they were able to use the restroom.
According to this policy, if a student had to use the restroom near the end of class, they would have to wait 15 minutes for the class to be over, five minutes for the passing period, and an additional 15 minutes in their next class period to be able to finally use the restroom. Understanding concerns that teachers may have, students still should not have to wait for 35 minutes to use the restroom.
