Bathroom Shutdown

The Conifer High School administration decided to lock every bathroom in the school except for two. This comes after the damage done to the school following a trend on TikTok called ‘devious licks’. 

The trend in question is about stealing things and causing damage to the school; especially bathrooms. In extreme cases, students have taken fire alarms and extinguishers, drinking fountains, and security cameras. In less severe situations, they take smaller things like soap dispensers.

All the major school districts in Colorado have been hit by the trend, including Jefferson County. At Conifer specifically, the boy’s bathrooms were hit the hardest. In one instance, a soap dispenser was emptied out into one kid’s backpack while they were in the stall. 

Principal Secretary, Annie Wesselhoff, said, “Kids were like taking the soap dispensers off the walls, trashing them on the floor. Somebody had taken the bladder inside of the soap dispenser and squeezed it inside of a kid’s backpack who was in the stall. Then they were writing graffiti and just trashing it. I know it’s this trend going on TikTok, which is so stupid…We’ve had graffiti over the years, and this is the worst I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been here 20 years.”

Wesselhoff did not see the damage firsthand but rather heard about it from other staff members. Both staff and students were affected, however, there has been no more damage since the school placed staff members outside the bathrooms for monitoring. 

“They’ve fixed up all the bathrooms by now. At least the damage we know about. They’ll probably open back up when things calm down,” Campus Supervisor, Dee Clark, said. 

Principal, Wesley Paxton, made the decision to shut down the majority of the bathrooms. He also made an announcement to the student body, letting kids know they can anonymously report guilty parties. 

Paxton said, “I hosted an assembly for freshmen and sophomores regarding the closing of the bathrooms. I’ve also stationed staff members outside the two sets of open bathrooms. Since then, there have been no further issues. After 6-days, I plan to reopen the bathrooms.”

Paxton explained that there was no major damage to the school, other than a few incidents with soap dispensers.

The National PTA Board released a message to the Jefferson County PTA Board. They wrote, “A few PTAs have reached out to National PTA and TikTok to flag these occurrences in their school communities. As we have been doing throughout the collaboration between National PTA and TikTok in our PTA Connected work, we urge families to have open, ongoing, and regular conversations about safety on the app to ensure they are using it productively and responsibly.”