Gibraltar's intended restroom design reduces students' safety
https://doorcountypulse.com/gibraltar-school-advised-to-borrow-asap/
The board approved the first reading of a revised policy that calls for restroom stalls and showers built in the new addition to have doors that can be secured and/or walls that reach to the floor to ensure the privacy of students, visitors and staff. The policy also adds gender identity to the statement.
And then they approved the second, and final reading. Now the toilet stalls will be built in a way which compromises students' safety:
https://core-docs.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/asset/uploaded_file/3443/GSD/3039115/05-22-2023_Agenda.pdf#page=2
There are good reasons why the vast majority of multi-stall public restrooms do not have stalls or doors reach to the floor. This is a good read on it, https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/642735/reason-public-bathroom-stalls-have-gaps, but I'll summarize:
Students sometimes pass out in the restroom. The gap underneath the door helps prevent a situation where a student is unconscious and no one is aware of it. This is the most obvious reason why the Gibraltar school board's new policy is a mistake. The other things listed in the article also make sense: easier cleaning, less undesirable behavior, and lower cost of construction.
The article does not mention that extra-private stalls make it easier to add graffiti without getting caught. It is just asking for someone to add something irreverent — maybe about people who try to make themselves look like the opposite sex.
In a narrow sense, this is a new problem, but it can also be seen as an older problem in new garb. The controversy over school peanut policies comes to mind.
Peanuts have been banned in many schools because some students have an anaphylactic allergic reaction. If a student brings a sandwich with peanut butter, exposure through the air could make another student with a peanut allergy swell up and die, so the thinking goes.
A problem with this line of thinking is that students live outside of school too, and the rest of the world isn't going to be peanut-free. Students with serious peanut allergies are not going to swell up and die just from a tiny trace of peanuts in the air. And that is a good thing, because even peanut-free schools have a trace of peanuts in the air none-the-less. Learning to navigate allergic hazards and how to reduce the harm helps peanut-allergic students learn to stay safe, not just in school, but also outside of school and after graduation. Over-reacting to the health hazard and the liability risk is unhelpful. For more if you want to read up on it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5638466/.
The same goes for people who claim their identities as the opposite sex and bathroom construction. Students who say they are transsexual still live in a world where most people don't unconditionally and wholeheartedly support and affirm transsexualism: https://news.gallup.com/poll/350174/mixed-views-among-americans-transgender-issues.aspx. Polls do not indicate that this situation will change anytime soon, or by the time graduation comes around. Why should school officials over-react in ways which create unrealistic expectations and which make all students less safe?
Thorstein Veblen's study cabin on Washington Island is worth considering. This photo of his cabin ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/14452042@N05/6078306689 ) shows how tiny it was. Why didn't he build a nice cottage? Veblen gave close consideration to different cultures across the world, and was critical of their status symbols. He knew better than to pursue them. Wokeism falls right into his criticism of conspicuous lifestyles. He observed that the more costly things were, the greater status they brought. This created a perverse incentive for retailers, where the more they raised prices on certain items, the stronger demand would become. The ordinary economic law of supply and demand no longer set prices, which could now defy ordinary economic reality.
Transsexualism fits into Veblen's theory because it elevates elective surgery. Elective surgery has long been a status symbol, where high price brings added cachet. Spending more on making restrooms less safe also fits the mold of a status symbol good. And so do many outright scams. When people chase status symbols, they may fall prey to both outright scams and high-priced products which lack reasonable justification for their price. What will bring status-conscious consumers back to ordinary reality?
It is dehumanizing to strongly immerse oneself in an economic theory. If I buy an item or receive a service at an ordinary price from an establishment I trust, I am respected. If I fall prey to a scam, I am a stupid mark. Some in Door County have a culture of seeing their customers in a utilitarian light — an attitude that if they are moneyed, pretend to respect them, because that is all they are good for — but if they aren't, they are garbage. Such a mindset is corrosive even to its own practitioners. The same corrosion affects Wokeists, where people are afraid of what happens if they don't conform, because all they are regarded as being good for isn't really much to speak of at all.