Starting in the fall, students will be required to have their phones away from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. with limited exceptions. Students and faculty had mixed reactions to the new policy, seeing both the possible positive impacts but also potential drawbacks.
“There have been a lot of uses with the phone that can really help our lives — some people listen to music, some people need to contact their parents. There are a lot of emergencies that have occurred within the normal day. I feel like it’s unfair to those who use it fairly and responsibly, you know, for them to have them completely taken away.”
— Raghav Singh, junior
“I do think it’s gonna be good for our community in terms of bringing us together and giving us more present-mindedness. I do worry about the carve out or the caveat to having them during lunch, because that feels like the prime time where we could actually have connection and community.”
— Jason Pallas, art teacher
“I’m hopeful that it will be an opportunity for us to have better community as a school and for students to be where they are and be present in classes, and that the policy will strike the right balance so people can get what they need.”
— Katie Clendenning, service learning coordinator
“My initial reaction was that I understand where the concerns are coming from on the behalf of faculty and parents, but I think that overall it’s gonna be met with a lot of adversity from the students.”
— Mira Reddy, sophomore
“It’s taking away, like, one of the responsibilities that we got when we went from middle school to high school, and it shows that the administration doesn’t have trust in students in order to be able to manage their own free time since we’re not allowed to have phones during free periods either.”
— Catherine Groves, junior
“I was all right with it because it does mean that we have more interactions with more people, and it also means that I would get off Instagram.”
— Alex Yamini, ninth grader
