Letter to the Editor

I used to believe that living on our island isolated us from all of the craziness of the Lower 48. I've often bragged about how in Wrangell we still lived the white-picket-fence, kids-playing-in-the-streets life of the 1950s. Unfortunately, that is no longer something I can say. Social media is pumping all sorts of Lower 48 craziness into our town.

You can find the latest craziness by going to #deviouslicks on TikTok. There you will find hundreds of short videos from all over the country glamorizing theft and the trashing of schools. And it's happening here. We've lost soap, paper towel, toilet paper and hand sanitizer dispensers. Signs have disappeared. We've had soap spread from one end of the bathroom to the other and several intentional attempts to plug toilets with rolls of paper.

Believe it or not, I've caught several kids by simply looking at the videos they've posted of themselves doing "the crime." At this point, the situation seems to be primarily middle school students. High school students are doing fine. (Keep your fingers crossed!)

Since most of our problems seem to be in the middle school bathrooms, we are going to implement a new bathroom policy for middle school students:

Each teacher will give each student three free bathroom passes per quarter to be used during class time.  Once the three passes are used, students will still be allowed to go to the bathroom, but will have to make up the time after school.

Each teacher will also keep a bathroom log. Students will need to sign in and out for bathroom breaks taken during class.

Students will be encouraged to use the bathrooms during their passing periods which occur every 45 minutes or so.

We realize that some students might have medical issues that require more frequent breaks during class than three per quarter. If your child is in this situation, please let us know and we will be happy to give additional free bathroom passes.

I suspect that like many internet fads, this one will die out fairly quickly. When it does and when our students get a handle on this type of behavior, we are hopeful that these rules can be phased out.

Bob Davis

Assistant principal/lead teacher

Stikine Middle School