In prison, bathroom usage is restricted and inmates are only allowed outside of their cell at certain times. If prisoners are found outside their cell, they are punished. These regulations are eerily similar to Groves High School’s hallway rules.
This year, Groves implemented new policies to try and discourage students from skipping class and hanging out in the halls. One of these new implements is the 10-10 rule, prohibiting students from leaving their classes for the first and the last ten minutes of class. Another change is the dreaded hallway sweeps, which the office will randomly announce over the PA system, requiring teachers to lock their doors, leaving anyone left in the hallway stranded and stuck with an automatic detention.
The purpose of these rules is clear: to prevent students from missing class. Last year, if you left class at any point of the day, you could see numerous students hanging out in the halls and skipping class. However, these new policies hurt students’ learning more than they help.
Students’ outcry over the 10-10 rule has been dismissed by Groves staff, who claim that students should have no reason to leave class within the first or last ten minutes because it is so close to passing time. At Groves, students have eight minutes to get to their next class— more than most schools. Groves staff see these eight minutes as the perfect time for students to use the bathroom. However, it is unfair for staff to expect students to use the restroom during passing time because of hallway sweeps.
Hallway sweeps directly contradict the 10-10 rule. In eight minutes, students are supposed to use the bathroom and then get to their next class, but if they take too long they risk detention because of hall sweeps. At first glance, this seems like a lot of time. However, many things can get in the way. If you speak to a teacher, you lose time. If you have to wait in line for the bathroom, you may not even reach a stall before the bell rings. Why would any teenager risk detention to use the bathroom? Obviously, students won’t risk using the bathroom during passing time but rather wait ten minutes and then leave class with no threat of detention.
Not to mention students caught in hallway sweeps will miss even more class time than if they just came a few minutes late. All of the students who get caught in the hallway sweeps, including students who were just inches away from the door when the bell rang, have to wait as administrators collect all the students. Once all the students have been processed, they have to fill out a Google Form and then wait in line as a teacher or administrator writes each one of them a pass. After this lengthy process, they can finally return to class (I’ve seen someone take over 30 minutes to return from a hallway sweep). All of this causes students to miss an extreme amount of class. With hallway sweeps, students can end up missing around half an hour of learning just for coming in a few minutes (or a few seconds) late. How does that help their education?
With all of that, it is now in the best interests of students to use the bathroom during class rather than passing time… but this interferes with their education. At the start of class, teachers often waste time taking attendance or doing other miscellaneous tasks before getting into anything important, especially at the start of 2nd hour, since everyday five to ten minutes are ‘wasted’ watching the FANN or at the end of class where teachers typically have students do classwork or homework. Unwilling to go during passing time and risk detention and unable to go during the first and last ten minutes of class, the time in which teachers often do very little, students are often forced to go to the bathroom in the middle of class, when they are likely being taught important information. This causes them to miss information which harms their education just because they had to complete a natural bodily function.
It’s unfortunate, but the 10-10 rule doesn’t even stop students from skipping class. Limiting the time students can be in the halls doesn’t discourage students from avoiding class. If a student wants to leave class they will just wait the ten minutes then leave for as long as they want, as they did before the rule was put in place. All the 10-10 rule does is cause these students to leave during the middle of class, rather than the beginning, harming their education even more.
It should be clear to everyone that something needs to change. The 10-10 rule removes inconsequential times for students to use the bathroom. Hallway sweeps amplify this as they discourage students from using the bathroom during passing time. The only unrestricted and safe time for students to use the bathroom is during valuable class time, giving students no choice but to leave at the expense of their education. Even after all that the 10-10 rule still fails its purpose of stopping students from loitering in the hallways. The 10-10 rule is unsuccessful in every way and should be removed immediately, or else students’ education will continue to pay the price.
