Have you ever had to poop at school? If you have, and you wipe like a normal person, you likely know the struggle shared by every Helena High student when using the restroom: the toilet paper is AWFUL! It is extremely low quality and doesn’t even get the job it needs to do done. Never in my life have I seen such a poor excuse for this bathroom staple.

The administration at Helena High seems to be punishing students for needing to poop by purchasing cheap, nearly unusable toilet paper that does not meet the requirements of toilet paper. TP should be soft, strong, and reliable, and the toilet paper at HHS is none of these things. 

The TP here is rough and scratchy, making it uncomfortable to wipe with. It is weak and brittle, often ripping with the slightest downward pull. It does not get the job done whatsoever and can barely even pass as toilet paper. Students would probably be better off just wiping their behinds with the paper towels. 

Don’t trust me? Here is what some of Helena High’s students had to say. Dani Stinson said, “It’s really thin, you can see things through it, and it’s really scratchy. If I had the choice to use the toilet paper at this school or a piece of low-grain sandpaper, I would pick the sandpaper.” 

Ellen Box said, “It’s tissue paper that they put on toilet paper rolls.” She recommends the school district go to Costco to buy “real” toilet paper instead of continuing to purchase bad paper. “It’s giving all of us depression,” Box claims. 

Will Dexter said, “It’s a little rough. I wish they would have made a conversion to different toilet paper years ago, but they didn’t, and I don’t know who to talk to but I’d really like to change that.” He agrees that it has had an impact on the students’ daily mood. “It’s affecting their attitude and their wanting-ness to learn.” 

Lastly, Izzy Snell said, “It is thin, and scratchy, and stupid, and it’s generic. We should be using Charmin Ultra Soft.” She thinks that the school should “stop being so cheap. We know that you have funding, and you’re using it on dumb [*stuff] that we don’t need, so maybe use the money wisely because we’re the ones making you money through all this [*gosh darn] testing you’re putting us through.” *Expletives edited.

EcoSoft, the school’s supplier of toilet paper, is seriously lacking. The paper here can’t be any more than half-ply at most. The school may be trying to cut costs by relying on this cheap brand, but their money would be better spent paying the extra money to get good quality toilet paper. 

How can the Helena School District hoist such a horrible product on us and still go on sleeping at night? If the toilet paper we are forced to use is at all reflective of our school district, something is seriously wrong. If the school can’t even spend the extra bit of money to provide much needed comfort on something everybody uses daily, they must not care about the students as much as we think. 

Something so seemingly unimportant can make all the difference in the world when it comes to comfort and cleanliness. One doesn’t know true discomfort until they try to wipe with low-quality toilet paper. This is unbelievable and needs to be changed immediately. 

It isn’t just a matter of being picky, it’s a matter of keeping students happy and keeping morale up. It’s a matter of cleanliness. It’s a matter of comfort. Quality toilet paper obviously means a lot to the students, so the school district needs to make a change.