Roaming through the halls of BHS without a pass is officially something of the past for most students.

A recent re-enforcement on hall passes has students aggravated. However, the reasoning behind these passes is more than just wasting paper and time. These passes help ensure learning and safety.

We, The Roar, believe that students should use hall passes when moving destinations during class time.

Although hall passes may seem pointless, there is a purpose behind them. For example, they help control the amount of students who choose to wander the halls during class time. By enforcing students to use hall passes, they must confront their teacher about leaving the room to go to the office, bathroom, or anywhere else they need to visit. Since the teacher is officially informed of their absence, they can monitor how long a student is gone for, and if they need to hunt them down to bring them back to class. Also, if a student is found wandering the halls without a signed pass from their teacher, then they could possibly be dealing with a detention. These school rules are enforced to keep students in class and learning.

In many cases, hall passes also require the students to temporally sign out of their class.  The administration wants kids to fill out a signup sheet with their name, the time, and where they are going. When students return, they should also sign back in.  By doing this, teachers know who is in their classroom at all times. This is important because if the school were to have a fire drill or a lock down, they need to know who they are missing.  If the school has a lockdown and the teacher realizes that she is missing one student, then all she has to do is look at the chart.  The chart will tell her who is missing, so that she can report back to the office. From there, the child can be taken care off.

Others see these hall pass requirements as a waste of time and that it should not be given to all kids. However, how do you determine who gets a hall pass and who doesn’t?  How do they discriminate a good kid from a bad kid? This would lead to so many challenges for all teachers. Not only that but what if a kid sees that his/her teacher only gives them a hall pass and no one else? Their self-esteem will drop, knowing that they are untrusted by their teachers. Hall passes should be enforced for everyone, no exceptions.

In order for everyone in the school to accept hall passes, they need to know why they are being enforced. The purpose will make more sense to students once they are aware of how passes keep students in class and safe.
Spending 30 seconds writing out a hall pass will be much more rewarding than spending 30 minutes in detention.  Just make life easier for yourself and the people around you and fill out a pass.