Who cheated with whose boyfriend, last night’s Facebook fight, catty tags some girl put at the end of her tweet: all of these fall under the category of ‘Stuff-I-Really-Don’t-Care-to-Know-While-I-Throw-My-Gym-Clothes-on-in-the-Perfume-igated-Locker-Room.’

As a student who is completing her third year of gym, I understand entirely the urge to talk in the locker room, and the excitement you get when you see your friends for the first time since second period, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we have to constantly shout over each other, laugh painfully loud at every joke we hear, or gossip about someone new and vulnerable every single day. Plenty of girls, myself included, probably want to get in and out of the locker room without either being choked by someone’s body spray or being given far too much information about someone we don’t know, just because another girl really wanted to tell her friends what she heard about her.

Remember, ladies: everyone can hear the rumors you spit and the nasty comments you make when they’re two lockers away, putting on their shoes. So, spare the gossip, spare the rumors, and please, please spare the asinine, profane jokes and ear-shattering laughter. Spare your perfume showers and your Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram updates. It’s beyond the point of something other girls just don’t care about– it would be a favor to all locker room patrons if the annoying habits would just disappear.

And, on top of the locker room’s other lovely assets, every girl who enters is greeted with a complete and total lack of privacy. It’s understandable if you don’t want to use the bathroom stall with the makeshift door– being a curtain draped over it– but don’t count on being left alone in a regular stall, either, because I promise that one out of three times, you’ll get barged in on by someone who apparently has such an urgent bladder issue that it couldn’t wait the four seconds it would take to knock. Not that they’d be able to hear, though, over all the shrill screams and angry turnouts from the rumor mill. Oh, and if you have any enemies, I wouldn’t recommend calling the locker room a safe-haven for any of your personal belongings– believe it or not, girls are plenty vicious enough to tamper with each other’s things as some form of revenge.

School policies, common courtesy, and humanity don’t end at the locker room door, ladies. Don’t you think it’s high time we start acting like it?