Why are school bathrooms the target of so much vandalism?

This school year, in addition to keeping schools open during a pandemic, teachers and administrators have had to combat the “devious licks” challenge on TikTok, where students steal or vandalize property at school. Interestingly, most of the occurrences of the challenge have been in school bathrooms, where students have pulled sinks off walls, upended toilets from the floor, and smashed mirrors into shards. Those familiar with American public schools, though, are hardly surprised — bathrooms are notoriously ground zero for devious behavior. But why is this necessarily the case? Restaurants or theatres or ballparks don’t typically have to worry about their bathrooms being destroyed, or people making out in the bathrooms (gross), or people smoking in the bathroom. So why is it the case that bathrooms, specifically, are the location of so much bad behavior on school campuses?

School bathrooms are a peculiar institution. They are perhaps the only public places in schools and in society where teenagers are assuredly free from adults; many teachers fear going into school bathrooms, both for their health and for others’ perception. But nowhere else in society do teenagers and adults use different public bathrooms — stadiums, restaurants, amusement parks, churches, and summer camps all have bathrooms without age segregation. School bathrooms, themselves, become age-integrated during non-school hours; parents visiting a school for a play or a basketball game end up using the student bathrooms, which are typically more…