-Should We Have an Open Campus?

By: Mr. T

Many years ago, any student at Eudora Kean High School could leave campus at lunchtime and buy some lunch down in the Red Hook Plaza area or go home to get something important that they forgot to bring to school. But as soon as I came over to Eudora Kean, all of this changed. I was upset by this and was wondering why the students are now not able to leave the school campus.

Before I came to this school, I had heard my sisters talking about how awesome it was that they could leave for lunch. I asked them, “Why is it good to leave?” One of them replied, “I don’t like deh lunch room food, so I could geh ah chance to grab some lunch from one of deh restaurants or food van to eat.”

Leaving the gate at lunch was not a big problem when the former principal, Mr. Sinclair Wikinson, was there. Students could leave without asking permission to go about their business. Some even hung out by the restaurants in the area for lunch. This privilege was good for the students at Kean.

But sadly, this great thing that we had came to an end. Why? Because some students managed to abuse this freedom to do other activities like heading over to the mall or going someplace beyond the Red Hook area for reasons that did not pertain to school. Some of the businesses in the area were making too many complaints about students loitering around their property. Then, there were fights occurring off campus. Finally, students were not coming back to school at the right time.

These were some of the problems that Dr. Sharon McCollum, who is now the principal, had to deal with. How did she correct these problems? Well, she has monitors by the gate and any student who decides to leave must have a good excuse and a pass in order to go off campus, even if they are a senior.

But even with this closed campus policy, students still manage to sneak out the gate. I asked a student if he ever left the gate without asking permission, and he said, “Yeah, I done it ah lot of times and it is so easy to sneak out the gate.” He knows that disciplinary actions are taken when students are caught off campus.

Mr. Robinson, the dean of students, said, “Having a closed campus is more of a security problem.” The administration wants to know who comes and leaves the school gate at all times. They don’t want students to be going off campus picking up all kinds of weapons and bringing them back on campus.

Well, I understand the reason for having a closed campus, but I think that the administration should once again have an open campus; they could decide to give it one more try, and search students when they are coming back in the gate.