By: Cady Lewis

The first thing that comes to mind when someone here’s that you go to North Toronto is, “Oh! You have that new school right?!”. And you happily respond, “yep that’s me!” Having a brand new school should mean many things: shiny floors, clean desks, no graffiti, and definitely a sufficient supply of toilet paper. But the truth is, our school, as new as it may be, doesn’t have these things.

Everyday in the old school kids would have to check every bathroom stall to find one with a sufficient lock, enough toilet paper, and even a door. The stalls were full of people’s thoughts written in black permanent marker, with the reactions of others written messily underneath. Yes, these notes were fun to read, but it was time for a change. It was time to be in a school with the perfect bathrooms; bathrooms that didn’t matter which stall you were in, because they were all a pleasure to be in. But little did we know, we would only be so lucky for the first week or two…

Some bathrooms have been locked for days because they have been mistreated, for example one of the boys washroom was closed because someone was stealing the soap dispensers. What does somebody do with a soap dispenser? I have no idea, but whatever their motive was caused the all of the boys at NT to not be able to go to the washroom convenient to them. There are toilet paper rolls on the floors of the washrooms and never enough in the stalls. The lack of paper towel, although environmentally friendly, causes people to use half a roll of toilet paper to dry their hands. So maybe paper towel would end up being more helpful than harmful.

Now that the first few weeks are over, and all of the hype of the new school is slowly fading, people are stopping to care. They are stopping to realize all of the hard work that was put into this school for three years. In our favourite stairwell BB, there was a lovely spill of chocolate milk all over the stairs, and what did people do? They walked over it, around it, or even through it. But didn’t even think to tell a janitor, or clean it up. Now I’m not saying that I did any of those things either, but it is this kind of apathetic behaviour that is turning our brand new, state-of-the-art school into a kind of nice, but dirty school.

We should make it our goal to clean up after ourselves, and realize that writing on the new school is just as pointless as stealing a soap dispenser. It just adds more things to the to-do list of the school. We should all be proud of our new school even though we all miss the old one. We have to remember that we are the first students in this building and will be the first impression of NT for many. This is where we will be coming for out high school reunions, and for our graduation; we can’t take this for granted. We have to treat this school with the respect and honour it deserves.