Starting on Sept. 17, East administration began enforcing the new Securely Pass system — put in place to regulate traveling during seminar.
The previous system required students to fill out a paper pass, detailing where you were going and what time you were leaving. That would then need to be signed by your seminar teacher. Once they arrived, another teacher would sign the paper, students would do their work, then return to their seminar classroom at the end of the hour.
With SecurlyPass, the system now operates completely online. To travel during seminar, students are required to fill out a pass to the teacher you’re departing from and the teacher you’re visiting, and then wait until the pass has been accepted.
The Administration recommends to put the pass in the day before so its easier and more structured for the teachers to account for how many people they will be expecting.
Spanish teacher Laura Buckman, says she enjoys the passes so far and thinks this system is going to be better for multiple reasons — once everyone figures out how to use it a little better. But as right now, it’s still new to everyone.
“I think once we all learn how to work it everything will go really good.” Buckman said. “It will help with who really needs to come see us, the amount of kids in our room, and i think it’ll help with hallway traffic.”
With the new system, once students travel they’re unable to leave the destination classroom.
But while the system was implemented to ease travel during seminar, it’s led to some unforeseen issues. Students often report passes not showing up on a teacher’s end, causing the teachers to simply trust that the student entered in a pass.
“There has been some hiccups with either the students or the program itself,” AP European History teacher Emily Fossoh said. “But I think we have reevaluated, and we are going to continue to progress and figure out whats the best for our school.”
Fossoh, who has a freshman seminar, says her class is pretty confident with the new system as they used it the year prior at Indian Hills. Fossoh says this prior knowledge helps students adapt better to the system compared to inexperienced students
While the system is new for most, the hope is that students eventually feel comfortable using it and the bugs are worked out.