Hall Passes: Con

Hallway Permit Fails To Offset Its Shortcoming

By Fred Spector

As a result of complaints of noise in the halls at Grady, a system of out of room permits has been established. During this short period of time many cons to the repeated experiment have been stated.

First of all, it comes to the point of being ridiculous when a teacher has to spend his time patrolling the halls and chasing students when he Could be planning future classes or utilizing time constructively such as grading papers.

CLASS DISRUPTION

A student who needs to go to his locker or to a restroom. momentarily can totally disrupt the mood and order of a lecture in order to have a teacher pause to fill out a permit.

In many cases a student who is held over in class or caught in a similar situation may miss much of the lesson if he is even fortunate enough to be allowed to enter class due solely to the fact of having to spend the time having a hall permit drawn up for him.

At times I've found that not having a hall permit due to an independent class aggravating as well as tiring to have to travel to the inner-most regions of tile sub-basement to obtain one whereas in that time I could have already completed much of my work.

Surely the noise levels in the halls, with exception of times such as lunch break, is not deterimental enough for a student to be deafened by whistles and other such devices used to clear the halls.

I believe that we can execute our work normally without the "benefit" of hall permits that are restricting us from a long known freedom at Grady.

By far, the greater part of this is due to students traveling up and down the halls hitting lockers, screaming, and doing whatever seems to be interesting while at the same time being earsplitting. There have been several complaints by the teachers and students concerning the noise. Students have been asked to clear the halls. Since these pleas fell on deaf cars, the students will now have to have a hall pass in their possession whenever they venture outside the classroom while school is in session.

The out-of-class permits should keep hall traffic to a minimum and thereby stop or at least lessen the noise. But if it doesn't, the institution of a demerit system, which could lead to possible suspension from the school has been discussed by the Student-Faculty Board. This may be carried out should the hall permit system fail.

Before this, Gradyites had the right to sovereign hall travel, a right which few other schools have.

It is too early to measure the effectiveness of the "out-of-class permit" system, but hopefully we will learn to be mature enough so that we will not need it.