Pro
By Adrienne Liefeld / Co-Editor (2007-2008)
On the first day of the new school year, homeroom is reserved to review school rules and policies. Each year we zone out, knowing full well that this is one drill we already know.
This year, however, students were shocked to find a new, stricter tardy policy in place.
This new policy was met with plenty of grumbling and groaning from all sorts of people throughout the student body.
It seems these days that we, the students, can find something to complain about in practically any situation. From time to time, however, these complaints can contradict each other.
Just last spring we were all up in arms over the prom Breathalyzer scandal, declaring ourselves responsible young adults. If we are so responsible, however, why is it that we are unable to make it to class on time?
One of the many goals of our high school years is to prepare us for the rest of our lives. One such lesson we are inevitably going to need to learn along the way is the ability to get to places on time.
Many of us are going to be at college in a few years, living on our own for the very first time. A few years after that, we are going to be going out into the “real world,” starting our careers. From here on out, being on time is going to be essential, because as they say, “Time waits for no man.”
If you are 10 minutes late to a class when you are in college, that is your money down the drain. If you are 10 minutes late to a job interview, you can kiss that opportunity goodbye.
Soon enough, each one of us is going to be accountable for ourselves, so why not start now and establish habits that are going to benefit us for the rest of our lives? Inaddition, the new punishments for tardiness are not altogether unreasonable.
The chief argument against the new tardy policy is that, since we are all only human beings, sometimes accidents happen. An alarm clock doesn’t go off on time. We’re just running a little late. In order to compensate for just such accidents, each student is allowed four essentially “free” tardies.
This is more than reasonable.
Tardiness is a bad habit, and as such, it makes sense to punish students who are developing this habit. You’re al-lowed to be running late every once in a while, but why should you reasonably be tardy more than four times in one semester?
Also, students seem to be upset by the fact that tardiness of over 10 minutes will be counted as truancy. In the context of class time, 10 minutes is more than a little late, though. If you actually think about it, if you miss 10 minutes of class, you have missed 20 percent of that class.
That is a lot, whether you like it or not.
The moral of this story is to just get where you need to be and get there on time. If you are there on time, the severity of the punishment makes no difference. How hard can that be?
Con
By Howie Zisser / Opinion Editor (2007-2008)
As we all stumbled into the building on the first day of school, we didn’t expect anything out of the ordinary. We thought it would just be the usual “welcome back to school” speech that we’ve heard year after year.
But we were wrong! Little did we know that the school had devised a new student-tardiness policy.
This is not the procedure that has been in place for years. The new policy is much stricter and promises to dish out much more punishment than we’re accustomed to.
Instead of allowing five tardies each quarter, as the old policy did, the school now limits us to only four per semester. Some say that you shouldn’t be late anyway, but mistakes do happen. A student should be punished for an honest mistake.
With the new tardy policy in place, there is almost no room for a simple mistake anymore. Five tardies and you get a one hour After School Retention. Six tardies and you will be sent to two hours of sitting after school in ASR. And the madness doesn’t stop there. Seven tardies in one semester will result in a one-day suspension!
Of course, those irresponsible students who intentionally come late to class or that make a habit of it should be punished, but not those of us who made an honest mistake or had other uncontrollable factors play into our tardiness.
Out of the roughly 90 days in a semester, if a student is late only seven times, that is only 7.6 percent of the time. Now I’m not saying that it’s okay to be late, but give the students a break.
Also, there are even more implications involving tardiness. If a student is more than 10 minutes late to class, he or she will be considered truant. It’s 10 minutes. It’s not as if he or she missed the entire period.
As I’ve walked to school at various times with different people, I’ve noticed that there seems to be one constant worry on everybody’s mind: will I be late?
No one can afford to be late, because who knows when tragedy will strike and your alarm clock won’t go off. Or even worse: car troubles. Imagine this: you’re out to lunch with your friends and you put your key into the ignition of your car to go back to school and the car won’t start. Not even so much as a sputter.
You have no chance of making it back to school on time. This is awful; you’re going to have to walk back to the school and plead your story in the office, but the end result will still be an unexcused tardy.
But wait, you’ll probably be 15 minutes late. Now you’re truant. Shame on you!
At this point in the day, you and your friends are already truant, so why not make a day out of it? Walk back to one of your houses, kick back and relax, and watch some television.
Maybe “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” will be on. You can deal with this unforgivable sin tomorrow. But hurry up, you better not be late!