As everyone knows, a few security changes have been made around the school this year. In my opinion, they are ridiculous.

First, every exterior door except the one by the main office is locked at all times. I understand the safety aspect of it, but now students have to hike all the way around to come in to the building. For the students that park in the E-Hall lot, the senior lot, or the lot by the MAC this is a very long walk. Again, I understand the reason behind locking all of the doors, but the doors have never been locked before. Why now? Why lock all of the doors this year? Now, if any student is tardy, we have to wait outside, in the cold, for someone to be nice enough to open the doors. It’s an outrage. I’m furious.

In the mornings, the doors are all locked until 7:30. What if we need to talk to a teacher? Locked. What if we need to go to the library? Locked. Or the bathroom? Locked. The doors are always locked. I think this is overkill, perhaps instead of locking all the doors except one, they could station security guards at each door or at least unlock one door on each side of the school.

In addition to the locked doors, a separation rope has been added to the main hallway starting at the library in D-Hall and going past C-hall. I understand that the divider was added to prevent the traffic jam that the hallway is known for but unfortunately it has just caused more traffic. Whenever I am tardy, all I have to say is “I was stuck in hall traffic” and automatically I no longer need to go get a tardy pass because the teachers understand. Some of the “intelligent” students here think they can avoid the traffic by walking on the wrong side of the rope but this is completely and utterly wrong. In fact, this makes the traffic worse. The ropes need to be taken away all together and just let the kids figure it out like they do in every other hall.

I understand the thought process behind these changes but, in reality, they are not helping. Students are still late, there is still traffic, and students are fed up. Maybe it is time to scrap these two ideas and try something different.