PCM High School has dealt with vandalism in the school bathrooms for many years. This year, the defacement reached its peak with boy’s bathrooms being shut down. The students have to earn their bathroom privileges back by being vandalism-free for a certain number of days. The school has four custodians: Gary Wilkening, Virgil Courtney, Jane Pitt, and Laura Hollander. Hollander and Pitt shared their thoughts about the desecration. “What’s the point? What point are you getting across by vandalizing something?” said Hollander. She spoke about her day-to-day life, describing it in one word: busy. She already spends her whole day cleaning, the vandalism just adds more work on top of what she already has to do. She enjoys all of the support PCM gives her, saying it’s her favorite thing about working here. Advice Hollander wanted to share with the students was, “The world’s ugly, don’t be ugly, be kind.” Pitt also shared her thoughts and is very confused about why students continue to do this. “Is it because of us? Because they’re mad at us for something? We just don’t know,” she said. Just as Hollander said, Pitt describes her day as busy, very busy. She explained that they work all night to clean the school, saying it takes a lot of time and effort. When asked what she likes about PCM school, “The staff, the kids, everybody is friendly, nice they make you feel comfortable.” she said. Pitt wanted to share this, “Be kind to everybody you never know what everybody else is going through.” As the custodians, they do all this work every day and night so the vandalism just piles up on their schedule. Kristen Souza, PCM’s principal, also shared some of her thoughts about the vandalism. “It’s not fair, and the last vandalism was actually directed at one of our custodians and that’s just terrible. These are people that are just trying to do their jobs.” Souza said. She also explained that if or when the school finds out who committed this crime, they will be charged. There’s not only a board policy against vandalism, but its also against the law. “We’ve had some pretty significant vandalism in the bathrooms and in locker rooms and we cant do that” Souza said. She knows that it is a pain to physically close the bathrooms but this was one of the very few options to put the vandalism to an end. “I don’t ever really worry about our kids being respectful, I think it’s maybe one or two people ruining it for everybody else.” she said. Relying on the goodness of all the students at PCM is something she believes in. She also hopes that students can realize our custodians are human too. Hopefully this is the last PCM will see of the vandalism and those who are causing the trouble can begin to see things through the custodians’ eyes. PCM High School appreciates all the hard work and time that is put into keeping the school clean and hope to show their gratitude by respecting the bathrooms and custodians.