“I don’t care about it,” senior Lauren Dickey said.
This is a common opinion among the student body about the new ID policy regarding student safety. Many students feel that the policy is getting to be too much.
“I think it is helpful, but I think the ID policy is overkill,” senior Cameron Egan said. “We have to scan in to get in and out, so obviously if I’m in the building I have an ID. It is more of a checkpoint rather than a safety measure.”
Checking into the school building, one can see many students put their lanyard on, scan in, and then throw their lanyard and the ID it holds back into their backpack. Students in the halls not wearing their ID is a common sight despite staff telling them to put it back on.
Now many teachers would blame this on simple teenage rebellion and stop there. But there is more to it. The lack of honesty between administration and students is the key to why students won’t wear IDs.
“I think it is very needed, especially in the climate of our world today, with a shooting happening often,” orchestra teacher Jeffrey Rollins said. “I think it is easy to lose the bigger picture when you’re a 16-year-old. You have a group of students that are just choosing to be defiant. You have other people who genuinely forget.”
With the issue of mass shootings going up, students should be wearing IDs in order to maintain safety within HHS. Scanning in is a checkpoint, but wearing the ID later on is a safety measure.
“We’re not saying that this ID is going to shield you from anything, but it does allow us to keep track of who is in the building and who isn’t,” Rollins said.
School administrators need to tell students that IDs are to track who is and who is not in the school building if they ever want to get people to listen. The ID is not protection, it is a tool to be used to protect. It does not make anyone bulletproof, but it immediately shares who is meant to be in the school or not.
People need a concrete reason to do something, and without concrete evidence as to why students should wear IDs, they will not. Huntley High School needs to be more upfront with why they make students wear IDs after scanning into the building.
