On Friday April 28, it was announced to all gym students at MSHS that the locker rooms would be locked from that day forward during class due to a hole in the wall in the boys locker room hallway.

Currently, the boys locker room hallway must be locked throughout the whole block; and the boys can only enter with key access from Brandon DeMatto or Stuart Jeck, who must observe the locker room closely to ensure proper behavior.

This new enforcement also applies to the girls locker room, which some believe might impact how quickly the boys behavior changes. “I think that this is a good reminder that the behaviors of the few impact the many,” P.E. teacher Gabriela Santos said.

There have been issues in the locker room before that were previously repaired. “The wall in there has already been fixed multiple times from stuff like this,” Michaelray Abeyta (9) said. “So I’m guessing they either will fix it or they will not.”

The locker rooms have been monitored strictly in the past for other reasons. “Well, I thought it was already locked due to old vaping problems,” Kelsi VerVaecke (9) said. “I thought that was already the situation.”

Students do believe that this is a proper punishment. “I don’t really think they could have handled it better,” VerVaecke said. “There’s not really much else they could do except find the exact person who started it.”

The damage has been stopped for the time being, and teachers hope that this issue does not reside in the future. “They’ve stopped whatever the issue was to prevent further damage at this point, but they’ve yet to repair the wall,” Santos said.