Most students at IHS are familiar with the assorted serving spoons, toys, and laminated
cards that teachers use as designated passes to bathroom. Then there’s the pad of paper passes for
trips elsewhere. Not only is this system inconvenient for everyone involved, because teachers have to handwrite each one, it is also flawed in that its enforcement—asking certain students to display their passes—introduces bias.The distrust and suspicion from the adults can erode feelings of respect and safety among students, and must be addressed by school administration.
Perceived bias and feelings of distrust were evident in the data from a school-wide survey sent to the student
listserv. Out of the 321 participants, 36 percent were stopped in the hallways of IHS and asked to display a pass. A breakdown of these results by race and curriculum level revealed many worrisome trends. African American students were twice as likely as white students to get stopped and asked for a pass, and students in Regents classes were twice as likely as students in AP classes to get stopped.
Some students noted this trend in the comments section of the survey. Out of the 92 people who left a comment, 10 expressed this exact sentiment: “The hall monitors will stop [a] black student but just smile at me [anon-black student], even though we were doing the same thing at the same time.” Interestingly, no black students
expressed a similar impression. Overall, students seem tolerant of the system, but not totally content. Students rated the “fairness” of the system at an average of 2.8 on a scale where 1 is unfair and 5 is fair. No system will please everyone, but most students think that this system could
be fairer.
The feelings of unfairness are intensified by the fact
that the reason for being stopped is usually not explained; students are seemingly stopped arbitrarily. The immediate question that pops into their mind is, “Why me?” One student commented, “[Being stopped] makes me
feel like a criminal.” When the reason that a person is stopped is not clear, it is easy to assume that it was unjustly based. Students who got stopped rated their noise level at an average of 1.5, where 1 is silent and 5 is loud. While it is likely that students underrate their noise level, it is also possible that students are stopped because they look “suspicious.” The hall monitors may have suspected that students were skipping class, but about 90 percent of students who were stopped in the hall reported that they had not been skipping class. This arbitrary “punishment” is detrimental to creating a learning environment where students feel comfortable.
Another problem is that the rules about where passes are required are impractical, inconsistent, and full of holes. For example, students may be confused why a pass is necessary between the classroom and a bathroom a few steps away. The journey between the library and cafeteria is especially fraught with conflict. The rules for going between the two are constantly changing, although this was certainly not the intention. Originally, a pass from the lunchroom sufficed; the rules changed to require a pass and a schedule, and now, a pass from the cafeteria and a school ID. One student commented, “I would like for [the school] to make up their minds to stick with passes, IDs, or schedules.”
In the survey, students shared some tactics to evade getting stopped. Some said, “You just have to look like you’re going somewhere.” Others said, “Very few administrators bother, and the ones that do don’t stick around, so you can just walk out of sight and do whatever you were doing before.” One creative student noted, “Nobody even bothers checking if I’m carrying a pass or a rectangular yellow index card.” Even when students try to follow the rules, there are times where they just slip through the cracks in this system. For example, the school allows New Visions students to carpool up to Cornell and the Cayuga Medical Center every single day without senior privileges or a pass. What would prevent a student from leaving campus
and telling an administrator they were in New Visions?
The problem with the current hall pass system is that it leaves lots of room for potential bias. School administrators and students should have an open dialogue about long term solutions to this problem, but an immediate fix is needed. Ideally, a system to keep kids out of the hallways would also check everyone equally, and would not cause any loss of dignity or feelings of confusion, anger, or injustice. Enforcing a much stricter policy in which all students are checked, while not offering students the degree of freedom that the current system does, would ensure that potential biases were eliminated. Additionally, the student ID should become a more important tool in ensuring attendance and hall etiquette, with stickers that note free periods becoming the main way to check attendance in the halls, and with barcode scanners in multiple locations to facilitate easy sign-in and sign-out from the building.
The potential for bias and unequal enforcement of the current hall pass system is alarming, and the many loop-
holes and policy changes mean that students rarely adhere to rules that are designed for their protection and wellbeing. School administration must reevaluate the current system, and must listen to the opinion of students when making changes to policy and enforcement practices.