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'TikTok' challenges lead to broken bathrooms on campus, parent warnings

Chloe Shaver

Writer Intern

The beginning of the school year has brought students back onto Fallbrook High School campus, for good and for worse. With a lack of social education brought on by COVID and distance learning, many students are struggling to reacclimate, both educationally and socially. As students are returning to campus, there are increased reports of students struggling with finding friends, staying focused on lessons, and other life skills that could no longer be enforced as virtual learning continued.

An unexpected issue that has come up are TikTok challenges – online ‘challenges,’ created by individuals with millions of followers on the site – to commit crimes and get in trouble. The September ‘challenge’ was called ‘Devious Licks’ with the goal of stealing the most outrageous item possible.

TikTok is a social media platform which faced controversy in 2019 and early 2020 under President Trump for worries the China-based portion of its database was selling information to the Chinese government. The lawsuit ended when the company promoted its presence in the United States, such as their CEO, American servers, and independent American technological staff.

The platform is popular with young adults and teenagers for its ‘For You’ page, which features short videos that the app’s algorithms think an individual user will enjoy based on their viewing history. The endless scrolling feature as well as its ever changing content lead to the app becoming more popular as teenagers were faced with more free time than they had been accustomed to.

Users can find themselves scrolling and finding more and more examples of these ‘Devious Licks.’ From bathroom fixtures, such as sinks, toilets, and soap dispensers, to road signs, to weights from gyms, there are plenty of increasingly strange objects people have decided to steal. The campus of FHS has not gone through this trend unscathed, unfortunately.

At the start of the school year, remodeling projects were ongoing on campus to renovate bathrooms, the bowl, and other places on campus. As the second boys’ bathroom on campus finished renovations, however, it was destroyed – in the name of this internet trend.

Toilets and urinals were ripped out of walls and floors, sinks were destroyed and thrown onto the ground, mirrors were broken, and the entire bathroom trashed and rendered unusable. The issue? There are only two main bathrooms for each gender on campus so, any boys not centered around the clock tower are forced to use portapotties.

Campus supervisors and teachers want to avoid students wandering aimlessly around the halls or, for many students, simply getting lost around a new campus. Prior to the bathrooms being destroyed, there was a smaller set of restrooms located near classrooms; however, construction began for those the day that the renovations for the first bathroom finished. Female students are able to use their newly renovated bathrooms, but until the men’s restrooms are finished and repaired, male students are using portapotties located around campus.

There are still bathrooms for both genders open and centrally located on campus. The clock tower, a central point of campus, has open restrooms, as well as the agriculture classroom area, located past the football field. The 400s block, the section of campus consisting of portable classrooms, autoshop, and mechanical engineering, are also able to use their nearby restrooms. However, for male students too far from the clock tower and who don’t visit the 400s or Ag on their schedule, the porta potties are their only option.

Parents were sent a warning directly from the FUHSD Superintendent Ilsa Garza-Gonzalez, about October’s TikTok trend of slapping or assaulting teachers or staff. Parents are being asked to warn their children about the dangers of committing these crimes and the consequences of their actions.

Students who participate in this challenge will be faced with suspension, possible expulsion, criminal charges, and more, not only for the student, but for the parents as well. Additionally, Garza-Gonzalez is trying to find the student(s) responsible for destroying the bathroom, and is offering a reward to anyone who knows who it may be.

The student will be responsible for paying for the costs of repairing the bathroom, hiring costs of paying workers to repair the bathroom, and legal fees for destroying school property.

 

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