Call me crazy, but it seems like hand sanitizer dispensers should have some hand sanitizer in them.

Almost every classroom has at least one hand sanitizer dispenser stuck to the wall. There also are a few in the cafeteria. They’re in place to give students easy access to hand sanitizer, useful after blowing noses or cleaning hands before eating lunch.

Some people argue that simply washing your hands is more effective than hand sanitizer anyway. Even the Center for Disease Control writes, “Washing hands with soap and water is the best way to reduce the number of microbes on them in most situations.”

But, the dispensers are convenient so that people don’t have to walk all the way out of class, across the hall, and go to the bathroom every time they want to clean their hands.

Well, this would be convenient if the dispensers weren’t lacking in their most important component.

Virtually every time students attempt to use one of these hand sanitizer dispensers, nothing comes out, and they have to push four or five times to get a single drop, if anything at all.

The hand sanitizer industry has been booming in recent years.

“As total health expenditure in the United States has risen during the past five years, and the fears of a potential Ebola outbreak spurred consumer interest in disinfectant products throughout 2014 and 2015, the Hand Sanitizer Manufacturing industry has experienced strong growth,” states the IBIS World website.

This fact, and the lack of hand sanitizer provided in school, has caused a lot of students to have to go out and buy their own hand sanitizers, and teachers have to buy sanitizer for their rooms as well.

Maybe nobody is telling the custodians when a hand sanitizer dispenser is empty. Maybe people think somebody else will point out the empty dispensers. Regardless of the reason, we need to work out some type of system to get some hand sanitizer into all these sad, empty dispensers around the school.