The amount of rage a small, laminated piece of paper can induce is alarming. The new hall passes, since their arrival, have been on the receiving end of continued annoyance and disgust. Quite simply, it’s a small inconvenience nobody feels that they deserve or wish to deal with.  Aren’t we a little too old for this hand-holding? Why were they implemented without any appeal to the students first?

Students seem most vocal about how the hall passes are inherently dirty. High school bathrooms aren’t known as the cleanest places on the earth, and it’s inevitable that passes will be brought there. Who knows if someone has accidentally placed a pass in a puddle of… whatever’s on bathroom floors? And, to say the least, it’s uncomfortable to imagine the number of people who have touched a bathroom pass, not to mention their hygiene. Personally, I don’t trust a random mass of people using a pass each day to keep their hands, and that small sheet of paper, clean.

Students see the problem as an apparent lack of trust from the school administration to the students. Deciding how to deal with whatever hallway problems there are, our school didn’t actively call for students to help or even issue a warning. Instead, students were greeted with a sudden, unexplained appearance of hall passes, to the confusion and annoyance of many. Add that to a general feeling of suspicion emanating from staff in the hallways, with Paras patrolling about, asking students “Where is your pass?” and “Why are you out of class?”, it feels as though the school is breathing down our necks. Perhaps little in the way of actual enforcement has changed, but the feeling of distrust has certainly risen, all stemming from the hall pass.

MHS’s Hall Paras insist that the passes are doing positive work, saying the passes are improving attendance by “keeping kids in class, stopping kids from roaming the halls, and preventing kids from lying about going to the bathroom and then just going to the Dock.”  In addition, the Para who introduced the passes, Peg Hammerseng, said she is “tired of seeing the same kids out of class” every day, and wanted a way of “tracking who left class and for how long.”  Ultimately, Peg said these passes are for students’ own good, meant to keep them in class so learning can be maximized.

So, perhaps the intentions of the hall passes are reasonable. It is the school’s job to keep students in class. Unfortunately, the execution of their policy is questionable, displaying a combination of a lack of trust in the student body and a lack of hygiene that draws few supporters. Hallway security and improved attendance may be reasonable and admirable goals, but not through the suspicious and unsanitary means of hall passes. Our school needs to keep its goals in mind, but find another way to achieve them.  There was no transparency in implementing the hall passes, leaving students feeling disrespected.  If administration really wants to improve attendance, don’t force passes, but try talking to the students to find a solution that respects students and keeps them in class.  A better reception from students will make any policy meant to keep students in class actually succeed.