“Can I go get my homework from my car? I left it in the front seat.”

” No, you can not leave campus during the break.”

“But here is my I.D card–look, I’m a junior!”

“Sorry nobody can leave the campus.”

“But it’s in the front seat and I can see my car from here…”

Restricting students to stay on campus during all hours of the day is not only boring, but also superfluous. Every student needs a break from the chaotic world of high school, and it only makes sense that students want to leave campus for lunch or to get homework from their cars.

In years past, seniors, juniors and sophomores had the privilege of leaving campus for lunch. But now, along with other new school policies, the sophomores are forced to join the freshman on campus for lunch. To ensure that no underclassmen sneak out of school, security guards monitor the one and only gate students can leave through during lunch.

The overwhelmed and annoyed monitors check student’s ID cards as they line up to leave the school. The new design of (more often than not) one man scanning ID cards to go to lunch is not efficient and creates problems during lunch. Students anxiously wait in the line to get their ID cards checked, get into their cars and blast music as a way to feel independent in the now restrictive school.

Then students speed in their cars to go to their resultant of choice and speed back to school. This unneeded system wastes around five to eight extra minutes of lunch, and everyone knows those few extra minutes are quite valuable when buying food off-campus.

It is fortunate for upperclassmen to be able to leave campus during lunch, but all good things have their draw backs. Many students are required to bring big, heavy textbooks everyday with them to class, and since CHS does not provide lockers, students used to conveniently leave extra books in their cars.

However, with the new off-campus policy, students can no longer access their cars during passing periods or other breaks. Even though the school parking lot is considered part of campus, security guards refuse to make exceptions for books in students’ cars.

While the administration may disagree and say the new off-campus system is beneficial, they are not the ones late to lunch. By monitoring the gates during break and lunch, they claim that it is easier to regulate students and it limits the class-ditching. Those reasons may sound understandable in theory, but when put into action it is just a superfluous rule.

The new off campus policy of keeping underclassmen on campus during lunch and upperclassmen away from their cars during breaks is an unnecessary change to our school.