Masuk Free Press

At the beginning of the year, a new phone policy was instated at Masuk. The policy outlines three offenses. Each time you get caught with your phone, the punishment becomes more severe. However, this new policy is receiving a lot of backlash from the student body: many claiming that the policy is pointless, as no teacher consistently enforces it. 

At the beginning of the year, many teachers briefly discussed the policy with their students. “I learned about it during class in the beginning of the year,” Says junior Kaela Christiano, “We had to watch a five minute video on it, but after that, I never heard of it again.” Similar to Christiano, many other Masuk students also only heard of the policy once, or never heard of it at all. Therefore many students are unaware, or do not know much about this new policy. 

As displayed on the posters in almost every classroom, the policy has three levels to it. The first time, your phone gets taken by your teacher and put on their desk for the remainder of class. 

The second time you are caught with your phone out, the phone gets sent to the office, and you won’t get it back until the end of the day. 

At the third, most controversial level, your phone takes yet another trip to the office, but this time your parents have to come pick it up. 

“I get they’re trying to scare us, but this phone policy isn’t effective at all.” Says junior Olivia Cottrell. 

The goal of this policy was to try to limit the usage of phones in class, which is a reasonable concern. “Some people just have their phone [to keep track of] the time,but on the other hand, there are people who are really bad about it,” says Junior Kaela Christiano.   

While the effort was there, after the first months of school, it is clear that this policy has so far been ineffective. 

The biggest problem in why it hasn’t worked is the people who are meant to enforce it. “There were teachers that said they were going to enforce it and never did,” says Emily Sutfin, “None of my teachers ever actually enforced it, or even attempted to.” 

The inconsistency of the teachers enforcing the policy is a common observation among Masuk students. 

“It’s like the perfect thing for teachers to use, but none of them take advantage of it.” Says Kaela Christiano.  Teachers always complain about the overuse of phones during class, and this new policy seems like the perfect opportunity to take control of the phone usage in their classroom, so why don’t they? 

“I don’t have any teachers being strict about it,” Christiano continues. “The most I’ve seen is teachers giving warnings, I don’t see anyones phones actually being taken away.” 

Maybe if teachers consistently enforced the policy, they would see a decrease in phone usage in their classrooms. The rules have been laid out for teachers to enforce, it is now up to them to put it to use. But until then, there will be no resolution to the problem.

A lot of students claim that the issue of phones is not as bad as teachers and administration made it out to be. The biggest issue students have with the policy is that it’s too strict. 

“I always have my phone out on my desk and now that’s not allowed, even if I don’t use it.” Says Sutfin. 

With the failure of this new policy, many question how to resolve the problem of phones in class. “I think teachers should enforce it based on class,” Says Olivia Cottrell, “If one class is worse than the other, teachers should adjust how strict they are.” While this idea supports the continuation of the policy, others say there should be a whole new policy created. 

“The phones should be restricted more than they were in the beginning of the year, there was a clear problem,” Says junior Emily Sutfin, “But this is pretty strict, I think they should find an inbetween.” 

There is no doubt that phones continue to be an issue in the classroom setting. And it is clear this new policy is not as effective as teachers had hoped it would be. There are now two options for the administration and staff of Masuk High School if they want to resolve the issue of phone usage. 

They must either get teachers to consistently enforce the phone policy so it is equal across all classes, or rework their policy so it better fits the behaviors and needs of Masuk students.