The bathrooms at Tech are notorious for their shortcomings, with some of the biggest issues including rampant bathroom closures. Sometimes, trying to find an open bathroom can lead to an unwelcome journey across campus. But even when the bathrooms are open, they are riddled with multiple other problems. Insufficient sanitary products and broken equipment, combined with the bathrooms’ overall uncleanliness, lead to negative perceptions.
But there is a small group of Tech students who meet every Tuesday and Thursday after school in Room 106 working to fix the issue. Through the group, Real Hard, student voices are amplified throughout OUSD schools. Tech students might know Real Hard through its parent organization, Oakland Kids First, part of Oakland Youth Vote, which allowed Oakland youth ages 16 and 17 to vote in school board elections for the first time.
“Bathrooms are just not clean enough,” said Maya Rapier, Real Hard organizer at Oakland Tech. “There is stuff on the toilets, stuff on the floor.”
Maya identified three core issues that prevent the bathrooms from functioning optimally. First, accessibility: Maya spoke about how many schools have locked bathrooms, as well as the rarity of gender-neutral bathrooms that are open and available to students. Second, the lack of resources in Tech’s bathrooms: basic hygiene products are not being supplied, such as toilet paper, paper towels, soap, and menstrual products. Lastly, Maya stated that the lack of resources leads to unclean bathrooms.
Real Hard has been focused on improving the bathrooms for multiple years. A survey done by Real Hard during the pandemic found that many students would just avoid the bathrooms throughout the day. Maya pointed this out as a significant flaw because this increases students’ anxiety towards the bathrooms in general.
But are students working to improve the bathrooms? Juriel, a 12th grade Real Hard core leader, talks about the techniques that he and other students use to fulfill Real Hard’s mission of improving the bathrooms at Tech. The main method which reaches the most Tech students is called “base building.” Through poster making with flashy slogans and outreach via social media, base building is how students like Juriel bring their peers into the program.
But Real Hard’s influence cannot be limited to just a few students throughout OUSD schools. For Maya and Juriel, the people that control the money need to start caring about the conditions of OUSD bathrooms. That is why Juriel has gone to school board meetings to talk to the people that control the money and get their contact information. Juriel said that it “felt good” to get his voice out there and advocate for what matters to him.
With the things that Juriel has been able to do through Real Hard, his motivations for joining stemmed from boredom. He says that he joined because “I did not have anything to do after school, and I was kind of bored, so I just came.” But for Juriel, it is not that Real Hard is simply something to do after school that keeps him coming back. It is the fact that through Real Hard Juriel taps into the drive that he has. He says that he feels incomplete if he does not complete his work. As a senior, Juriel knows that it will be hard to finish this campaign to fix the school bathrooms before he graduates. He says, “I hope that I will have been a good enough influence on it [the campaign] and the people that I am passing the torch on to finish it.”