With new renovations in the future for South, attention has been brought to the conditions and cleanliness of the locker rooms and whether they should be included in this plan.

According to teacher and South alum James Adams, he cannot remember any significant changes that have been made to the locker rooms since he attended South in the 90s. He mentioned how even when he was a student, the locker rooms were not updated or comparable to most other schools’.

“Uselessness is a big word that I would use,” Adams said. “I don’t think our locker rooms are very useful. And then whether they get cleaned or no- I don’t know how often the custodians will clean a locker room or how they get clean. But other schools are more useful and newer. I think just functionality is a big deal.”

Current locker room user Alex English ’23 agrees that the locker rooms are outdated as a current member of the basketball team.

“(The locker rooms) aren’t the best, but we try to keep it pretty clean,” English said. “The floor is pretty old. We don’t ever really use the showers, but those seem pretty gross too”

English also mentioned how professional gym locker rooms such tend to be better kept, and are much cleaner than those at South.

“(Professional gym locker rooms) are definitely nicer, but they also get more funding to clean it- I guess those get cleaned daily,” English said. “The paid gyms like LA Fitness or Neighborhood club are gonna be nicer, but that’s because you pay to go there.”

Upon swabbing both a South locker room floor and LA Fitness locker room floor and placing a sample on agar petri dishes to grow for two days, the South locker room floor accumulated much for fungi and bacteria, as depicted in the images above/below (whatever’s on page).

Supervisor of Custodial Operations Randal Baker commented on the cleaning policy for South’s locker rooms, mentioning how each one is cleaned daily.

“(The locker rooms) are swept, mopped and dusted, sinks toilets are disinfected and trash is pulled every weekday,” Baker said.

Although they were unable to comment, according to LA Fitness’ policy of their website, “Every employee is regularly cleaning and sanitizing surfaces and high-touch areas. We use an EPA registered and hospital grade disinfectant for all of our equipment.”

However, according to Adams, he believes cleanliness is not the issue at hand with South’s locker, but rather that they need to be redone completely. He believes how they are now poorly reflects South as a whole.