During the 2023-2024 school year, Brebeuf has been undergoing renovations, primarily on the bottom floor and outside of the cafeteria. This construction has led to a few challenges, one of them being the girls’ access to bathrooms.
As the only Jesuit institution in Indiana, Brebeuf Jesuit was opened in 1962 as a college preparatory day school for boys. However, Brebeuf became coeducational in 1976 and was forced to accommodate the new members of the school: girls. As a school that was built for the purpose of educating men, Brebeuf was forced to make changes to accommodate the 153 young girls that joined in 1997.
In 1992, school renovations of bathrooms began. As a result of this, the women’s bathrooms around the school are randomly dispersed as areas for them were not included in the initial build of the school.
The recent ten million dollar project began planning pre-covid and broke ground in spring of 2023. Since then, the cafeteria has been going through phase one and is planned to be completed in December of 2023.
As a result, the kitchen and cafeteria will be ready for operation in January of 2024. The renovation of the rest of the student space in the basement (phase 3) takes place Dec 2023 through May of 2024. Phase three plans to gain occupancy and use of the renovated space in August of 2024.
With the recent cafeteria renovations, the bathrooms located near the cafeteria have been shut down.
Vice President for Campus Operations and Technology at Brebeuf, JD Ferries-Rowe has been handling the construction in the school.
In the fall, Ferries-Rowe made the authoritative decision to shut down the bathrooms so that they could be worked on throughout the semester. With this action, it was his hope to open the bathrooms with or slightly after the cafeteria renovations are finished in January.
When clarifying the renovations, Ferries-Rowe said my word choice of refurbishment was “really low-balling it.” He then went on to emphasize how everything will be new from the floor to ceiling, while also expanding the bathrooms and altering the layout.
Although these renovations will be ideal in the future, it has made school life especially difficult this semester.
In multiple conversations with students, it became clear with how apparent this issue is. When asked about her thoughts on the bathroom, Josie Skinner ‘25 responded “C’mon! Do you know how long it takes for me to use the restroom from the bottom floor?”
When asked to go to the bathroom, students are often told to be quick or hurry. However, this is not attainable for a school full of students with short passing periods.
The school includes four girls restrooms, five boys, two gender neutral and two faculty bathrooms. The three locker rooms in the school are locked during hours that school is in session.
Although we meet the total number of restrooms in the school by requirements, students are still facing long limes and long walks.
Ferries-Rowe described how the school is trying to combat this issue.
After realizing how the distribution of the bathrooms around the school is not ideal, the school has rearranged how housekeeping works. Housekeeping became a problem because there is no easy access to a downstairs restroom. Consequently, the traffic in that restroom off of the gym lobby is huge.
Within the last month, Brebeuf has made sure that bathroom is the first thing the housekeeper attends to, ensuring that the bathroom is clean before we’re even out of school.
However, this solution does not supply more restrooms around the school. While the construction is coming closer to an end, this problem is still quite apparent.
There are a lot of inconveniences that come with construction, especially those with bathrooms.
Especially for students that have one or more classes in the basement,
In some classes, it is less comfortable than others to ask to go to the restroom. Consequently, there are large bathroom crowds during the PRT’s and lunch periods.
During this time, it is especially important for the faculty to show grace to students when they need to use the restroom.
