You guys can't be serious? This went on all through my life in school. Junior High kids abuse the "bathroom" all the time.
They go there to talk, put on make up, meet their boyfriend/girlfriends out in the hall, skip classes, waste time or just use it as an excuse to get out of class.
We used to have those passes in Junior High. I don't think that it is a "bad" thing to do. I'm sure that if a child *really* has to go to the bathroom their teacher would allow them to go, but if I had a student in a class that always asked to go to the bathroom as soon as they came in the room, come on, I'm not stupid I know why they are leaving the classroom day after day.
I'm not looking at this from a bodily function kind of mentality. I'm looking at is as a form of seeing a problem, and finding a solution.
I know I'll be the minority, but oh well. This isn't the first time I've heard of it, and it won't be the last either.