When you first start attending Puyallup High School, you get caught up in the general sense of awe. The building is likely bigger than any other school you’ve ever been to, and more crowded. A maze to get lost in the first day of sophomore year.
When the school becomes familiar, you begin to see a different side of it. It stops being so intimidating, and as you settle in, you come to odds with the fact that the building is rather worse for wear.
I became privy to the situation with the state of the building a few months into my sophomore year. The Library-Science building and classrooms were obviously dated, the lab benches poorly arranged and aged. But it wasn’t a big problem, more of a quirk.
A few months into the year, however, noticeable problems started to arise. The only elevator in the building was deemed out of order due to sewage issues, making my second-floor classroom inaccessible to some of my classmates. We had to have class in a room set up to teach health for several weeks.
The Library-Science building kept deteriorating throughout the year, finally culminating in the decision to close the building the following school year. Almost comically, a sinkhole opened outside the building soon after the announcement.
By this school year, we had lost the Library-Science building, but every water fountain in the school gained a little yellow sign informing users not to drink the water without running it for 30 seconds. The warnings popped up seemingly overnight and students were joking about them nearly as quickly.
That is the interesting thing about maintenance issues at PHS: they are obvious to the student population, and we love to talk about it. It becomes rather laughable after a while, an inside joke shared around the campus. There are only so many headlines you can write in the school newspaper about buildings being in disrepair before you notice the humor of it all, only so many times you can talk to people from other schools at parties about ‘the sinkhole’ before you realize the comedy.
Occasionally, these things that we all gripe about lightheartedly break the bubble of our school, and the local community notices the things that we all take as normal. At the annual Alumni Assembly this year, I overheard several people in the women’s bathroom commenting to each other about how only one of the stalls had a lock. It was funny to hear someone noticing something so normal to anyone who frequents this building often.
I can only hope that we can do something about the situation at Puyallup High School. With the recent passing of the district levy, I am optimistic that our community will begin to see the physical version of this school that is obvious from the interior.
Until then, I’ll continue to run the water for 30 seconds before drinking it, study chemistry without the proper lab equipment and pray for there not to be another sinkhole.
At least they replaced the locks in the gym bathroom.
