Every morning most students wake up and rush through their morning routines trying to be on time for school. Book bags in tow, they go running out the door to catch the bus or drive their own car hoping they can make it on time before the first bell rings.
They beat the odds (and traffic on Amick’s Ferry) to make on campus in time but they have forgotten one small (about two by three inches) detail.
“Where’s your I.D.?”
“Put your I.D on!”
“IDs around your necks, please.”
This chorus of reprimand is usually the reminder that the ID is laying on the kitchen counter at home.
Trudging to the front office, mumbling about the stupidity of ID’s and questioning why the school makes students wear them, the ID-less scoundrel signs the clipboard for the five dollar fee… but there is another form- a form for an hour of Wednesday morning detention.
The new ID policy now requires students to purchase a new ID and they must sign up the form stating they will attend a Wednesday morning detention. Students are now facing double the consequences for forgetting their IDs.
Administrator Sully Sullivan said, “That’s a change made to try to cut down on people not having their IDs and getting so many IDs from the front office. He (Ross) made an announcement to the school and from that point on he added the one hour detention in the morning.”
The change in policy has many students angry at what they feel is an undeserved punishment for a rule they don’t see the point in.
Sophomore Mel Bussard said, “All of my teachers already knew my name by the second week of school. Why I have to wear I.D. I honestly don’t understand. I get the parents sign-in and stuff but I think we would notice if some creeper just walked in the door. And no teen is going to come to school and just walk around, especially if they don’t go here. What would be the point of that?”
Ironically, one of the main reasons for IDs is so that teachers can identify each student, yet it is often a teacher a student has that ends up enforcing the ID policy. Many students have similar views to Bussard. They feel the ID policy is unnecessary and its enforcement ends up being overly harsh, but the punishment seems to be reducing the amount of time spent handling IDs.
Front Office clerk Fran Tucker said, “Now that we’ve added the detention after the 7:55 bell we probably only print five. Before the detention, it was probably twenty and then it was all day long. Now, it’s very minimal.”
The school isn’t picking on the students, Mrs. Tucker and Mrs. Evers understand we are just teens. “We are sympathetic to you guys, we don’t want you to have to pay out of pocket for an I.D. and have to serve a detention, but we make close to 30 I.D’s a morning that some of you just tear up or loose.”
There is a point when enough is enough. Already over 400 students (according to Mrs.Tucker) owe money for I.D’s and some students already owe over 25 dollars, most of these students haven’t gone to Wednesday detention and haven’t had to serve a three hour Saturday for it either. Those who do go to Wednesday detention, pay the five dollars will most likely not be buying another I.D. all school year. The front office staff, Mrs. Evers and Mrs. Tucker has had a tree up all year that the students can up and place an extra I.D. up on so that if they do ever forget it they can just walk in find it on the tree and walk out.
Junior Olivia McCammon said, “I haven’t had to get an I.D once; I simply clip it to my book bag every day after school I don’t even have to think about it. I just do it. It’s honestly not that hard to keep up with it every day. I think that the I.D policy should be more enforced, if I haven’t had to go get one then no one should have to, I’m so forgetful of lots of things but taking two seconds out of my day to clip it on my bag doesn’t take hardly any effort” An easy way to keep up with our I.D’s is to simply clip it to our book bags or put an extra on the tree in the front office. Make the little step to avoid have to go to detention and pay five dollars.