Newspaper Article 1

Should Forgetfulness by Punished?

by staff writer Ben Zuegel

Each new school year heralds the arrival of new school rules, and we got a fresh batch, as usual. This year though, one of the new rules is that after leaving the building after dismissal, you cannot re-enter the building. Many people think this rule is pointless, but is it?

Last year, some students vandalized the school by spray-painting the front of the building with permanent paint, not paint that’s easily washed off. This event was a shock to many, because such an act of vandalism hadn’t been committed on school grounds in a long time, if at all, and this had repercussions.

This year, the school is determined to not let something like that happen again, and that’s how we get stuck with the new rules. What is the real point of not letting us re-enter the building though?

The administration believes that people that re-enter the building after dismissal are the people that will loiter around the halls and cause trouble. There is a lot of logic in this, and to that extent, the rule is good. But, there are other people who are affected by this rule than the loiterers and vandals.

Forgetful people are some of the biggest victims of this rule. What if you leave something important, like homework in school? Some teachers are forgiving of this, but you can’t take the chance that they will be. Homework, projects, lost articles of clothing, all these things are important, yet as soon as you step outside, they become inaccessible to you until the following day.

Should people be help culpable for their forgetfulness? That’s disputable, but sometimes you leave something behind by accident, and you desperately need it.

Sophomore Artemis Markakis was one such person who unfortunately forgot her orchestra music inside the school. “I had a concert the next day, and I couldn’t get my music. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I appreciate the administrator’s job of keeping the school safe, but maybe the school could consider revising the rule just a little.”

The administration and their rules come from a good place, but some of their rules have unintended consequences.

 Some suggestions I got from students, such as Artemis are that maybe, the person guarding the door from people re-entering the school could hold someone’s ID while they fetch their lost object, which would be returned when they returned. This way, if the person didn’t come back, the administration would know whom to punish. If the person didn’t come back after five minutes, the door-guard could leave and the next day the culprit could be punished.

Rules are good if they achieve their goal; therefore this new rule is a good one. However, unintended side effects are to be avoided if possible, so maybe the administration should consider a quick revise of their new rules and policies, just to make sure these side effects don’t trouble forgetful people.