Purple and white may just seem like two colors, but at Carlsbad High School, it could be your ticket to leave campus or the reason you are detained.

CHS enforced a new policy this year that requires all underclassmen to stay on campus. Different-colored student identification cards were created to show who can leave school grounds at lunch and who cannot. Campus supervisors roam the premises to make sure all freshmen and sophomores stay where they are supposed to be: on campus at all times.

“Freshmen and sophomores have purple; juniors and seniors have white. The reason for the different colors is mainly for lunch,” Assistant Principal Mr. Lord said. “When students are leaving, they hold up their ID card, and we see their face and the color white so we know you are a junior or senior. That easily differentiates for us whether or not you should be able to leave campus.”

Although an escape from the packed quad is ideal for some students, there is a specific purpose for a closed campus; safety is of the utmost importance for students. For this reason, juniors and seniors do not get complete leeway. Upperclassmen are only able to leave campus at lunch, unless they have a class at a different site or a personal reason.

“First of all nobody is supposed to be leaving at break. It used to be that kids would go out to their car and come back,” Lord said. “We didn’t have the personnel to really enforce a closed campus at break, now we do. We have the supervisors and a lot more manning our gates, keeping kids on campus. Part of that is a safety issue. A lot of issues that we experienced discipline-wise happened at lunch off campus. We have very little issues with students on campus.”

Aside from sophomores not being able to leave campus this year, more changes are coming to CHS’s closed campus policy. In the near future, all students will have to remain on campus at all times to ensure the safety of students and staff.

“Eventually the campus will be closed for everyone. We are phasing it in one year at a time.  Last year it was just freshman, and this year [it is] freshman and sophomores,” Lord said. “Second thing is Sage Creek is a closed campus, and we want to be consistent between both schools. When they are full capacity, they will be a closed campus, and we will be a closed campus also.”