One thing at Page that I have never understood is our tardy policy. I feel as if our policy is only focused on certain students who are consistently late and struggles to apply fairly to the student body as a whole. One example of this is when students are a few seconds late to class and are standing in the hallway and they get swept. When you get swept you are forced to miss more class time than you would have if you hadn’t been swept. The teachers do this to prevent students from just standing in the hallway and intentionally skipping class, which is a very fair idea. However, there are many students who are attempting to get to class and trying to get there and get swept when it would be much more beneficial to just let them be 10 seconds late to class rather than 10 minutes.

For example, there have been multiple occasions when I have been held in a class to finish an assignment, pack up my stuff, etc. and have had to rush to get to my next class; in these scenarios, I was late by just a few seconds and was clearly making an attempt to get to class, yet was swept anyway. These times I have been swept it was a complete waste of time as I was forced to write a page on how I can prevent being late again… I am rarely late, it was clearly an outlier and writing a page about it served absolutely no purpose and caused me to miss notes and other valuable assessments in class.

Another part of tardy policy that I disagree with is the automatic lunch detention you receive if you are late from lunch. As many may know, our lunches are extremely short, especially in comparison to other schools in Guilford County. Most seniors who drive typically go and get food at lunch and 25 minutes is nowhere near enough time to get food, eat your food, and return back to school. So on some days when I order food and it takes a really long time for my food to come out, I have to sit and wait for my food before I can return to school or I would have paid for no food. This makes students more likely to skip class in fear of punishment rather than return late in a situation that is not always there fault. This has happened a few times to me and many of my peers and it is very annoying to deal with.

Tardy policy needs to be changed as many people who try to get back are subject to punishment that may not be fair to them. Hopefully administration will make a change that will allow for fair policy that applies to everyone in the student body equally. Although it may be difficult, it is the best decision to help provide for a better learning environment for everyone in the school. Go Pirates!