Weekly News Archive

March 5 (’06) – March 11 (’06)

Lockdown

You should know about this.

The Shared Governance Committee (one of BHS’s governing bodies) will be meeting today to discuss a proposed “lockdown” policy. From what I’ve gleaned from murmurings within the school, the drift is as follows:

Students returning more than a few minutes late from lunch (which ends at 12:12) will find the campus completely locked up at every gate and doorway except for the administration building entrance—this is not so new; in my experience they already lock most of the gates and doors after lunch ends. At the administration building entrance, security guards will be waiting to escort tardy students to the counselors office where they will have to call their parents.

It is, in my opinion, ridiculous to make it more difficult to return to school in attempts to improve attendance. Students will sooner decide to skip their after lunch classes than deal with the hassle of a phone call home. From personal experience with a similar policy—the rule which says that if you are over 15 or 20 (I forget the exact number) minutes late for a class, you get marked absent even if you show up—I know that if it’s too difficult for me to get credit for going to class, then I simply won’t go. We’re high school students; we don’t need to be handed more excuses to cut classes.

Moreover, assuming that students do return to school and do get caught, this punishment is a waste of everyone’s time—the security guards, the counselors, the parents, and the student (who could be in class learning, even if they’re tardy).

On the other hand it is important to bear in mind that the purpose of any punishment is not simply punishment for the sake of punishment, but rather discouragement. If the punishment exists, the idea goes, then students will do all in their power to avoid it. I have been told that a large group of students were seen rushing back to campus last Thursday under the mistaken impression that the policy was already in effect. Clearly this does not speak well for my depiction of this policy as ineffective.

But keep this in mind (and while I hate resorting to generalizations, I feel the need here): the students who were rushing back to school are most likely not the students the school should be worrying about. Chances are that a student concerned with getting to school in a timely fashion and avoiding a phone call home is not the same student who is failing their English class due to constant tardies and absences. The student who is failing may very well be the sort of student who decides that getting back to school is just too much effort and they’ll just head home for the day. So if the policy isn’t helping the failing students, what’s the point?

If the policy passes tomorrow, it will go into effect on Thursday (or so I’ve been told). I’ll keep you updated on the status.

And on a slightly lesser note, comments are still disabled due to attacks of comment spam. This is of course destructive to the idea of BerkeleyHigh.org as a community forum, so I assure you that I am using all my resources to solve this problem. In all likelihood, comments should return soon.

— Harris