This past week was, for most, midterm week. But to many, the way the school organized the testing was chaotic and put into practice without much forethought.
Many anti-cheating measures were frankly ineffective and inconvenient. There were crowds of hundreds of students all pushing into the same exits. A lack of planning led to valuables being trampled and arguments breaking out. These factors all lead to an hour’s wait to leave the school. But what exactly happened?
Due to many students smuggling cell phones into midterms and regents exams in the past, the school has had a phone check-in area for years. This year, the check-in was in the chorus room, so the A-wing entrance was the designated entrance for students.
To get to your testing site, you would have to go in the A wing, enter the chorus room through one door, place your phone/ headphones in a plastic bag, leave your backpack, and exit the chorus room through the other entrance. The A wing was partially blocked off, making this the only way for traffic to move.
Thinking little of this system, I arrived a bit early to my first test Tuesday morning at seven forty-five. The line to submit my phone wasn’t terribly wrong though crowds were gathering by the entrance and a steady stream of students entering.
After the first hour of testing was over, I was able to leave my testing site and go retrieve my phone. I was, once again, early so I got my phone in about five minutes. I noticed phones in piles and bags lying across the floor. I had to wait for my friend as we were supposed to hang out after our midterms were over, so I stood outside of the A-Wing for about thirty minutes before I went back inside to look for them.
What I saw was more than two hundred people squeezed in the halls outside of the chorus room. Many more waited beyond the room for friends still trapped in the crowd. I called out for my friend and asked others if they had seen them. Unfortunately, nobody had seen who I was looking for.
I pushed my way to the front, as close to the line as possible. I nearly gave up and went home when ten o’clock rolled around. It was an hour after my midterm let out before some people got their devices, and another half-hour before my friend and I could finally leave.
The idea of a phone turn-in area is okay, but this system barely held up when hundreds of students needed to report to the chorus room at once. Having alternative entrances/phone turn-in rooms, perhaps separated by grade, would have allowed more people to enter and exit at once and decreased the time it would have taken to find phones.
Not to mention the lack of check-in diligence made the whole system pointless. I was unaware that I needed to check my bag in until the last day I had to come in. I know plenty of people who stopped checking their phones entirely and I’m sure that others found ways to cheat without using their phones.
All in all, I hope everyone had a good testing season and I’m glad the midterm madness has finally subsided. I’m sure these issues could be worked out by the time finals season rolls around. I hope that the school can implement some small changes, like splitting phone check-in stations up by grade or last name, which could make the system smoother.
