Foucault, Panopticism, and School bathrooms

Michel Foucault, in his Discipline and Punish, discusses panopticism in great length. Foucault suggests that people are “caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers,” (555) adding a new perspective to the idea of groups that dominate and groups that are dominated. Foucault indicates that, while those that dominate institute the system that exerts power over the dominated group, the dominated group internalizes the dominating group’s power, exerting that power onto themselves. I find this to be true in most cases, seeing how people impose rules on themselves that society defines as conventional, like stopping at stop signs. There is a fear of disciple if we do not follow these rules, so we force ourselves to follow them just in case the dominating group, whoever it is for the specific situation, is watching. However, I question whether Foucault believes that people can exist outside of this self-domination. While reading his example I thought about schools and those students that use the bathroom as a hideaway from the dominating group, or the teachers. These are many examples of this behavior from Brownsville Station’s “Smokin’ in the Boy’s Room” to the children in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever smoking in the bathroom during class. Students, when they know teachers are present, tend to follow the rules and impose self-discipline, much like the prisoners in Foucault’s example; these students know they are being watched. Yet, when they enter the bathroom, these students release themselves from that internalized power, breaking the rules. Now, this would not occur in Foucault’s example, as those prisoners were in cells unable to move outside of that cell. Yet, people are not confined to one room in real life, giving them the option to remove themselves from the view of the person in the watchtower. If we are supposed to apply Foucault’s example to specific institutionalized apparatuses in the real world, like schools, then we need to consider those that attempt to disregard self-dominance. How do they fit into the example?