Students came back to second semester with a new hall pass system in place: Securly Pass.

With the new pass system, only 20 students can be out at a time throughout the entire building, and simply put, this number is much too small for our school. Students have waited well over 10 minutes to go to the bathroom on multiple occasions. While 10 minutes may not be that long in the grand scheme of things, that is 10 minutes longer than it used to be.

The new pass system is flawed in its implementation and needs reconstruction.

Students who stay hydrated need to use the restroom more often. Girls who are menstruating need to use the restroom more often. No girl wants to admit that to their teacher when asked why they were gone so long or that they can’t go because they don’t have enough passes.

While that may fall under an emergency circumstance and would usually be overridden by a teacher, what about students in study halls that go to the library?

Some students like to go to the library during their study halls. However, going to the library counts as using a Now Pass. Students shouldn’t have to relinquish one of their few passes just to go to the library and stay there for the whole period. 

Not to mention the period at the beginning of classes where many students are trying to leave and go to the library, hitting the hall traffic limit within minutes.

This 20 student limit isn’t always accurate either. Sometimes, students come back from the bathroom and the teacher doesn’t check them back in right away. This then takes up a spot until the teacher remembers to update the student’s status.

A teacher’s job is to teach; they should not have to be distracted by bathroom passes on their computer during class. 

Securly Pass also isn’t punishing the right people: the problems of walking the halls and vaping in the bathrooms are still prevalent. The only thing that has changed is that the pass abusers have to wait a little longer.

So what could we do to remedy this situation?

Start with raising the hall limit to 40 people at a time. This allows a hypothetical 15 people for the Area One and Three bathrooms with an additional 10 for downstairs. Now Passes should also be raised to four a day (one for each class period, minus advisory) and should not be required in order to go to the library at the beginning of study hall. 

Securly Pass is a step in the right direction for addressing excessive hall-walkers and vaping in bathrooms, however, some additional fine-tuning is still needed.