What is this new punishment students have to endure for just being tardy? This year, a new tardy policy came into effect at West High, without giving the students a chance to give their opinions on the subject.  Most students would agree this was uncalled for or even unnecessary.  Most teachers on the other hand think this is a great way for students to be motivated to come on time. Either way students think this policy should be canceled or be changed.

Lunch detention is held in Room 4. For students who received lunch detention they must be there before 10:35 a.m., if not they must leave and try again the next day. It ends around 11:00 a.m., 25 minutes doesn’t seem long, but what comes after it is somewhat unfair. This means lunch detention is longer than the normal lunch.

Right when it ends students only have five minutes to get to class. Keep in mind that the normal passing time is eight minutes. In those five minutes a students who just came out lunch detention have the potential of getting another one. Lunch detention should at least end when the normal lunch does so the students could be on time to their next class.

George Vang was asked about his thoughts on the new tardy policy. “It’s unnecessary and I think it is a waste of everyone’s time,” he said.  George himself has not gone to lunch detention, but as a person who looks at from the outside he could see that the new policy had no reason coming into effect. Jacob Whitehead, unlike George, had to go to detention several times. He stated, “There is no reason to be in there, we can’t do anything if we didn’t bring food we can’t eat, but only thing we can do is stare at the wall.”

There are 1,842 students currently attending West High. Most of those students eat lunch at West. You could imagine how long the cafeteria lines could get. For the students who have received lunch detention, they have a time limit until for how long they wait to wait in line, which is 10 minutes. That is not long enough for a student to wait until they get to the front of the line. Because of that, they must leave the line without their lunch and must go serve their time in detention. This leaves the students hungry throughout the whole day, making them less focused while doing their class work. How can students work at their best if their stomach is empty?  Was this what West envisioned while they put the tardy policy into effect?

All in all, this policy has students wondering what kind of new consequences will West put into effect in the future. Will it die down or will they make more punishments after this? There should be an alternative instead of lunch detention. If a student has an unexcused tardies for a certain amount of times the student cannot attend one of the school events or something between that line. Instead of making them be in a closed room with nothing to eat.