by Taylor Fernandes ’14

Every year it feels like the school adjusts the cell phone policy to try and stop students from using them during class, yet students disregard the policy and fit in a quick text message while the teacher has his or her back to the class.

In the student agenda book, the policy states “1st offense- teacher warning, 2nd offense- teacher confiscation, and 3rd offense- security confiscation.” While some teachers take cell phones the first time they see them, others let students have a couple of warnings beforehand.

Instead of the endless cycle of rewording a failed policy at the start of every school year, the school should get rid of a cell phone policy all together and let the teacher decide the rules for his or her classroom. On the first day of school, instead of reading the required cell phone policy rules, it would be much more valuable for the students to hear actual consequences that are going to happen in each of their classrooms.

Some teachers are completely against students using cell phones, even during free time. Then there are others who have even mentioned out loud that if it were not for the fear of an administrator walking in they would allow students to be on their phones. Teachers have different classroom rules, and that shouldn’t be any different when it comes to cell phones.

The cell phone policy is useless since teachers and students almost universally ignore it. Much like everything else that goes on in the classroom, it should be up to the teacher whether or not cell phones can be used.