Remember when you used good ol’ fashioned paper and pen to travel for seminar, or when seniors didn’t have to have a sticker on their ID to leave for lunch? It seems like eons ago, but really that was only three years ago.
Just a few of the numerous unnecessary rules that have been established for students at SM East are SecurelyFlex, SecurelyPass and off-campus lunch stickers for seniors.
The rapid development of overcomplicated rules and restrictions such as, blocking websites and apps and online passes at SM East in the past few years has caused more harm than good in most cases.
Some rules are valid for our safety, such as checking ID’s at the door, or not allowing students to open doors for their friends. Additionally, ensuring that no one who will put students at risk can enter the building is a vital safety concern.
These rules make sense.
But adding more apps to our computers, like passes for everytime we need to leave the classroom, is excessive for us and for teachers. These teachers ironically might not even know how to operate said technology.
In many of my classes teachers dislike the new regulations on computers and I agree.
Opening your computer everytime you need to use the restroom is simply annoying. Especially in classes where I’m not on my computer practically the entire class. If I’m in the middle of reading a book for English, opening up my computer and taking minutes to sign into ClassLink, choose the teacher and destination, and waiting for a pass to be approved — it’s a complete waste of time.
Especially when I could quickly ask my teacher, “May I use the restroom?" take a hall pass and do what I need to do without wasting my and the teacher’s time by having to approve the pass.
I can even see how SecurelyPass is helpful in some cases. For seminar, it keeps things simple: you make a pass there, you make a pass back. But the new SecurelyFlex system undermines it completely. You have two different sessions available to travel to and it's even more work.
Students were just getting used to SecurelyPass, and it was becoming somewhat efficient for use, with SecurelyFlex, we are back at square one.
Not to mention the excessive restrictions on our school MacBooks. It’s completely understandable to block Tetris and Netflix, but when trying to do a 2000-word history paper and the only sources that show up are Wikipedia or irrelevant articles, it gets frustrating.
This then leads to having to find sources on my phone, then text them to myself on my MacBook — wait, we can’t even do that because messages are blocked.
Schools should have firm regulations that are efficient for students, and improve the quality of life at school. Although that may be the goal of these rules, it gets more and more difficult to exist at school when almost every action requires an online pass or a sticker.
I’m completely for the safety of students and helpful rules that make the school operate more smoothly. But not to a point where it creates more hassle for teachers and students, overall creating an environment that makes students less motivated as time goes on.
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