Near the beginning of the school year, an unknown student made a dubious and unsuccessful attempt to steal a toilet from Central Catholic grounds. After the toilet was broken, the administration instituted a locked bathroom policy.

All but the first-floor bathroom were locked off and made unavailable for students during the school day.

As extraordinary as it seems, this attempted theft and the school’s response were not isolated incidents.

In the few weeks when the challenge of stealing school supplies (known as “hitting a devious lick”) gained popularity on social media platform TikTok, schools across the country experienced problems with theft and vandalization of classroom materials.

Central’s response to increased bathroom shenanigans was not unique. Many schools, even others in the Pittsburgh area, began to close off bathrooms to prevent further harm done to the property and restore what was destroyed.

But problems continued as the trend remained popular: soap was smeared all over the floor of the unlocked bathroom in one incident.

Stall doors continued to be vandalized. Visitors to the bathrooms of Central Catholic will observe areas on stall doors that have been filed away to obscure obscene engravings.

Although a rebellious spirit within students is nothing new, what shook the country, and, on a lesser scale, Central Catholic, was the grand scope of it all.

The ambition and recklessness to attempt the theft of an entire toilet is a change from ordinary student hijinks. TikTok’s influence is the primary reason for this.

The trend amplified students’ tendencies and encouraged a shift from (mostly) harmless venting to more destructive acts with consequences, culminating in attempted toilet theft.

Students shared their opinions on the destruction, and specifically the toilet theft. One student said, “It was funny, but why?”

Many others shared the same sentiment, even one who claimed to have witnessed the aftermath firsthand, “It’s a tragedy to bathroom users,” he said, and, of the event itself, he described a toilet moved into another stall, and said, “I walked into the bathroom third period and I saw five kids with their phones over the stall, taking pictures.”

In general, students seemed amused by the event while acknowledging its consequences for the student body.

Response to the bathroom lockdown was varied. Many felt that the reaction did not match the seriousness of the crime.

“It was an overreaction,” said one student, and another said, “I’m not sure how that was an effective solution.”

Teachers, and even students, observed unhappily the longer time that it took for students to return to class.

Freshman Jordan Melfi expressed his concern, saying, “When I had class on the fourth floor, I felt I was losing valuable class time going down to the first floor just to go to the bathroom.”

Not everybody felt that the administration’s reaction was unwarranted, though. One student called the measures “perfectly reasonable,” and hoped the measures had instilled discipline in the school’s rowdier lot.

Most students seemed focused on the inconvenient nature of the policy, while others saw it as a smart way to fix the bathrooms efficiently and prevent further trouble until the trend died down.

As Central reopens its bathrooms on the third and fourth floors, it remains to be seen whether or not TikTok and the rise of the “devious lick” have substantially changed attitudes within the school or if the toilet incident and ensuing vandalism were simply a result of a now-dead trend and will not happen again.

The positives are that there have been fewer reports of bathroom vandalization among students, and having bathrooms available on all floors of the building where a class is held is an improvement for both students and teachers.

Although some students saw the locking of the bathrooms as a blunt solution to a nuanced problem, it seems to have worked, and reports of attempted toilet theft no longer haunt the halls of Central Catholic High School, which is all that any good student can ask for.