RING RING: A student checks their phone in the hall. Students are not allowed to use their phones during the passing period.

Students are not allowed to have phones out during the passing period, which can cause difficulties, as students need to communicate with parents or guardians. To avoid this rule, most people have figured out that to use your phone in passing periods, you have to duck into a bathroom or face a corner, which is either gross or suspicious looking. Students should be allowed to use their phones during the passing period.

“[Not allowing phones] doesn’t benefit anyone,” said Sara Abdelsalam ’14. “I think it’s annoying because, let’s say there is an emergency in the family, how would I know?”

“I was [once] trying to call my dad and I couldn’t do it because my phone got taken away,” said Jill Cornell ’14. “I was trying to have him bring something I forgot.”

Students have appointments, meetings, and papers to take care of outside school, and waiting until 12:35 or 3:20 to answer a text can make a parent (and sometimes even the student) nervous and frustrated. Parents communicate with their kids through texts, and if there was an emergency that the student needed to be informed of, it would come through a text- one they cannot technically answer until lunch.

“I think the passing period is your own time and you can do what you need. I don’t think it’s disrespectful to teachers during passing period,” said Hannah de la Cruz ’14.

“I think it should be allowed, you can’t answer during class and you need to see [the text],” said Ashley Allread ’15.

Some would argue that the parent could call the school and have the child informed via the office. My response would be that if it is of a private or sensitive matter, the family would want the ability to contact the child directly, which is  most easily done through text. And if the parent is just meeting the student with homework or a lunch, it seems like a bit of a disruption to the student to have them called down to the office or have their plans announced to the class.

“I think it’s annoying,” said Sam Mercier ’16 “People already use [phones][during the passing period], so why not?”

“Everyone already uses them and there is no point in incriminating something we all do,” said Anna Roberts ’14.

This has only been intensified with the shooting at Purdue on January 21. Students have parents working at Purdue, and parents have kids at a school two blocks from the campus. Communication was messy that day – as rumors swirled, kids and parents worried about what was happening and about the safety of their family. Students wanted to be glued to their phones.

While it is understandably not allowed in the classroom, phones should be allowed during the passing period so that students can communicate with parents without fear of having their phone taken away.