With a new school year come new rules. This year, lanyards worn around the neck are mandatory, students are not allowed to wear a clip or have it hang out of their pockets. If they forget their ID they may get a temporary ID from the front office but it’s only permitted to do this three times before receiving lunch detention or Wednesday night school. Students may also purchase a new ID for $3.00 if they misplace theirs.

The enforcement of the lanyards has increased this year, however some students are disliking the harshness of this enforcement.

“It’s too strictly enforced,” Robert Scott, junior, said. “It gets into class time which wastes everyone’s time.”

Teachers and staff have been accustomed to wearing lanyards and ID badges for many years. However, the students are still getting used to the IDs. Some are having trouble keeping track of them, and also see it as a negative thing.

“I think some kids see them as a punishment,” Chantell Upshaw, principle of M9, said. “But I think they’ll get used to them. We’re pretty much a small city so we need to be able to identify everybody.”

Regardless of the students who look down on the lanyards, most can agree that the concept is a good idea.

“It teaches us or at least introduces us to the idea of IDs,” Robert said. “and it pretty much gives us a sense of security because with the recent mass shootings in Connecticut and Colorado we have a sense of security that we know who is who.”

The staff have said they are pleased with being able to easily identify students, interact more with students whose names they may not know and the overall conformity of the student body as one.

“It’s like a uniform without us actually wearing a specific uniform, it creates uniformity,” Upshaw said.

Another new rule that the main campus has enforced are hall passes. Each classroom has two, one for the bathroom and one for the nurse that they must clip on their lanyard to either use the restroom or visit the nurse. Many students are indifferent to this rule. Among those students is junior Daniel Clifford who dislikes this rule.

“In a lot of classes if one person loses the hall pass then the rest of the class can’t go to the restroom for the rest of the semester,” Clifford said.

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