Changes happens all the time, whether it be living on your own for the first time or walking home from school because your mum can’t pick you up. For the most part, we are used to it.  This year students are experiencing some major changes to the tardy policy .

Once the final bell rings, teachers are no longer allowed to let in kids without a pass. Any late student has to find a school official who will scan his I.D. card and his tardy will be recorded. He will be given a receipt that he must give to the teacher before entering his class.

But even though this “master plan” doesn’t have any obvious evil in it, a few students think otherwise. Here’s why, whether you’re an “A” student or a “C” student you have a big possibility for not getting to your class on time for a number of reasons out of your control .

How much time do we lose by going through all the tardy process? Let’s see. Let’s say you arrive to class three minutes late and your teacher tells you to go get a pass. Meanwhile your classmates are giving you this “I’m sorry for you bro’’ look, so you just search for some sympathy in their faces, before taking the walk of shame to find your nearest school official. There goes one minute.

As you look around, there are no school officials in the 1000’s buildings,  so you walk up to the plaza. Three more minutes gone. Once you track down an official, he will probably ask you why you are late and you will explain the sad story of how you ran out of milk and had to go to Vons because you can’t possibly survive without drinking coffee and all that…. Another minute gone. He gives you the ticket and you continue the walk of shame back to class… three more minutes.

So we have a total of eight minutes of class time lost because of a three minute delay. And yes, eight minutes is a long time, for those of you who take Physics, you know what I mean.

This isn’t right or fair, but then again, there is no other way to control the people who avoid classes. Setting up a ridiculous tardy system that affects all kids is not a smart solution either.

But  the administration has already fixed one part of  the system by saying that they will delete all tardies every new semester.

So far tardies have been significantly reduced, people are more punctuate and responsible, fewer people are wandering around school during class time and kids that had hated school now hate school even more. These are signs that the system works, but it is a time consuming and expensive investment.

This time consuming and expensive system has caused more bad than good. Some teachers even defy the tardy system and they excuse their student’s delay. And after all, a rule with no follow up is optional.