As high schoolers we are all entitled to more freedoms such as a broader choice of classes, more lee-way for leaving study halls, and more time between classes. Also, it’s a common known fact that our school is surrounded by various restaurants and a shopping mall. So if we have more freedom, why aren’t we allowed to leave campus for lunch?

Recently the school has issued a new honors program. Along with being able to use a student lounge, students attending one or more honors classes are given a sticker and are allowed to use it as a hall pass. But in return juniors and seniors have to tutor other student at least once a month. So with these new freedoms already being added shouldn’t those students at least be able to leave campus? When asked about her opinion on this matter sophmore Nicole Webb replied, ” It’s understandable. The ability should be gained at one point in time. But honestly not all students can be trusted to come back on time.”  This I must agree as not all students can be trusted, but what about the ones that can be?

For this question I consulted Ms. Cain our principal. According to her, some of the main issues for students would be safety because the school is responsible for students during school hours, and they may need more than forty minutes to leave and come back.  It’s a huge policy that would need approval from the school board.

Other schools only allow the priveledge to well behaved sophomores juniors and seniors with a GPA higher than 2.75. This may be useful for the whole trust issue. Along with restricting the the students who may leave the school for lunch by GPA, students that have been proved to abuse this privilege will no longer be able to leave campus during their lunch periods. By abusing this privilege, most schools mean by not coming back after leaving campus, coming back to school under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or continuously  coming back to school late. Maybe in the future our school can think of using a restricted policy such as this.

So this is possibly something to be looked upon in the future. But the policy may only be implemented for juniors and seniors. So in the meantime we’ll just have to stick with lunches in the cafeteria, such as the occasional peanut butter and jelly or cold-day-old pizza.