The Crackdown on Phones and Dress Code at Moeller

The issue of Phones has been a long and controversial topic here at Moeller. Many people hate the new policy of phones, always having to be up regardless of what the teachers say. After all it’s their classes so shouldn’t they have a say in what the rules are? While not as strict as other schools, as a private school should we even have to enforce it? These are some questions that people have been asking around and wondering since the start of the school year.

Recently Ohio passed a law making it so kids cannot have their phones in school. While public schools have to follow it no matter what, however, because Moeller is a private school we do not have to follow it, and it is up to the school’s discretion. While many teachers do not care as long as you do not have them out Moellers upper management has decided to crackdown on the rule of keeping your phone in the phone pockets this year. Many students and I believe it should be up to the teachers’ discretion because it is their classroom and if someone gets caught with their phone out anyways, they will get the same punishment as now, but the teacher has more say in their own class.

Another issue is the safety in communication issues. Last year during the lockdown due to a threat we were not allowed access to our phones or contact with our parents. This left many parents concerned and only receiving updates from the school every 20-30 minutes, which too many is too long for them in a dangerous and scary situation. While the staff may argue that it would incite and cause panic, the global messages sent to our parents during situations like those just cause the exact same outcome but just adds another concern for the parents due to it not coming from their children.

Lastly with the dress code rules that were passed this year. While I believe that the new policy is significantly better than the old one where we are allowed one full day out of dress code before any punishment. However, the year prior Mr. Williams, while talking to us about suggestions, said that most likely we would be able to wear Moeller hoodies at school every day. However, when he brought this before the board and the school parents, they shot down the idea despite no real counterargument as to why. The allowance to wear hoodies would generate more income for the school through the student store and would create a sense of unity due to the lesser diversity in shirt colors we currently have. There’s a lot of benefits without negatives and yet they denied the idea without letting us argue for our side.

In conclusion the crackdown on phones has been a little extreme, not allowing teachers to set the standards for their own rooms and not allowing us to use our phones in emergency situations despite not having to follow the law due to us being a private school and despite the improvements on the dress code we have no say or ability to defend our stances or potential of new policies regarding the dress code and phone policy. My main gripe is not having the ability to state our points to the people when we are the main group, impacted by the rules implemented.