The bell rings. Athletes head to the locker rooms to get ready for practice. The girls see a sheet of paper taped to the door. “Reserved for Keene Boys Basketball.” They get ready quickly and are careful to take all of their stuff out of the locker room. There is a sports game, and the girls are being kicked out of the locker room to make room for the visiting team. This is just part of life for the female student athletes at Goffstown High School. 

The girls are usually not notified until they reach the locker room after school. The “evacuations” are often, but not always, posted on SportsYou, the digital sports app for team communication, the morning of, but many students already at school are unable to receive the notifications due to school policies and poor internet service. 

Athletics Director Ryan Cowette was putting up the sign as I was walking into the locker room yesterday, and there were many students already in the locker room when the sign was being put up who were not aware of the notice.

The boys’ locker room is not lent out to other schools, but is occasionally used by our girls’ teams for some games.

Some students have reported stolen and missing items after boys use the space. There have also been reports of the tampon dispenser being empty even though it was full before the boys used the space. Neither of these claims have been confirmed.

Many girls are annoyed and unhappy about this regular event, and there are plenty of both temporary and long term solutions that could solve the problem. One solution could be to have a schedule of when the students would need to leave the locker room posted inside on a monthly basis. That would give students more time to make sure they can get their things out. Also, spreading out the visiting teams among both the guys and girls’ locker rooms would help make it less of a constant issue. Putting boys from other schools in the girls’ locker room makes me and several other students uncomfortable. We are frustrated with not knowing who uses the space and would prefer that the Goffstown High School boys use the girls’ locker room and put other school’s guys in the boys’ locker room when necessary. I think that all of these solutions would make the issue less of a problem. A simpler option to alleviate some of the problem would simply be to put up the signs earlier in the day, before students have arrived for the day.