With the start of a new school year, new policies have come into play. Our principal, Mr. Dennis, has established these new rules for teachers to enforce, with jarring consequences.

These new policies include: 

• Using the bathrooms closest to your current classroom (not commons bathroom)
• Phones being put in phone holders at the beginning of class
• Teachers taking attendance within the first 5-10 minutes of class

 Consequences are as follows: 

• Confiscation of phones if seen in use during class
• Lunch detentions
• After school detention
• Seniors are not permitted to leave for lunch if they do not show up for detention

In an email, Mr. Dennis explained that, “students are expected to be in all of their scheduled classes at all times.  Students who cut classes may be assigned lunch detention, after school detention or an assignment to the Student Support Center.  A student will receive a letter during their first class of the day to inform them of their assigned detention.” 

Students have a lot to say about this. An anonymous 11th grader said, “I think the phone caddies make sense. We can’t learn if we are constantly on our phones and it’s very obvious a lot of people would still use their phones under their desk.”

However, some have opposing opinions. “Personally I think Mr. Dennis is taking it too far. I’m aware that he thinks this is for the benefit of our education but some of these rules completely contradict the schools’ own beliefs. I thought the idea was to treat us like adults, not children, but all these phone restrictions seem (and maybe I’m exaggerating) really over the top and unnecessarily harsh,” argued an anonymous 10th grader.

An anonymous 9th grader said that these new policies “don’t affect me all too much since I really haven’t missed any classes, but they are pretty terrible to be honest.” 

And an anonymous 12th grader stated, “At first when I heard that Mr. Dennis created a phone policy I was a little annoyed about it since it was my senior year but now I’ve gotten used to it and it’s not that bad.”

Senior Brandon Mont was disappointed over the new rules: “The fact that if we don’t show up for detention as seniors we lose the ability to leave for lunch, a privilege that we earned for making it all the way to being a senior.”

Do we really think these new rules are effectively making us better students? When asking a group of students via Instagram poll, 88% of Northport High School students agree that the new policies do not encourage them to be better students. We may be in denial, but there is still time for Mr. Dennis to amend these rules and receive the appraisal of his students.