Stop controlling our “business”

New e-Hallpass system disrupts Neshaminy High School students

Julianna Musser, Op-ed Editor

The horrid implementation of e-hallpasses into Neshaminy High School’s day-to-day operations is very frowned upon by many students and staff. These internet-based passes are difficult to use and cause an unnecessary burden on students and teachers when they simply want to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water. While some schools have been using these passes for years, they are very new to the Neshaminy School District, and students are begrudgingly adjusting.
According to vice.com, over 1,000 schools in America are now using e-hallpasses. The system is able to document the amount of time students spend in the bathroom or whichever location their pass is designated for. These passes are invasive to a student’s personal reasons for needing to use the restroom or handle other business.
“I think [the passes] can be an invasion of privacy because the amount of time someone needs in the bathroom varies depending on the person and the day,” an anonymous NHS student stated.
No student wants to be required to justify to their teacher why they were gone from the classroom a few minutes longer than the pass intends for students to be out.
In my experience, I have seen older teachers struggle to figure out the technology. Teachers that get caught up in their lessons often forget to end students’ passes. This can lead to a student who was out of the classroom for five minutes looking like they were gone for two hours.
The app does not allow students to use more than one pass at a time so if a teacher forgets to end said pass, a student will be unable to open another pass. Already stressed and anxious students should not have to deal with the nuisance of contacting their teacher to end their pass in the middle of the school day when they should be focusing on class.
“Any teacher that spends a lot of time away from the computer and actively engaging with students has their class time disrupted by going to their computer to accept and end the pass,” Neshaminy senior Michael Somogyi said.
There are also many different aspects of people’s days that make this system challenging to abide by.
“I think that it does not really take into account how the school day works for a lot of people,” Somogyi elaborated.
Personally, as someone who does Dual Enrollment, I was never in the building when the system was being explained during homeroom. Since the teachers were not comfortable with it at the beginning of implementation, there were not many people that were able to teach students like me how it specifically worked.
The restrooms are also very selective with which ones can be used based on what class students are in. The pass is designed for students to use the restroom that is nearest to their current location.
Being restricted to certain bathrooms with only a small amount of people allowed in at a time extends the wait time unnecessarily.
There are only enough passes to allow five people into a certain bathroom at a time when there are six stalls. Travel time is also not accounted for, along with the time people could be washing their hands when another student could be on their way to the restroom.
Some bathrooms may remain completely empty during the time when a student may be waiting an extended amount of time, specifically for the restroom closest to them.
There is also a struggle with individuals that use the gender-neutral bathroom.
“[The gender-neutral bathrooms] are open to students who have a documented issue…,” Principal Stephen Gartska said. “They are now locked and students will need to check in at the counseling center to get access to them.”
With these guidelines, it may be stressful and more tedious for the individuals that use these bathrooms. They may have to travel all the way across the school to access them, making the six-minute time limit almost impossible to stick to.
Although this arrangement was intended to improve the operations of NHS and have an awareness of where all students are all of the time, it has created a very stressful system for students and staff.