By Ariel Carmona and Daisy Carrasco
Are phones really the distraction that the school would have us believe?
A policy that has been in place, prohibiting the use of phones during lunch has been widely controversial as some students at Neuwirth believe that phones shouldn’t be in use during the day as it's a distraction while others believe we should be allowed the use of phones at least during lunch. This policy was not an Alliance policy, but rather a Neuwirth policy. This means that SSAC, the Student Site Advisory Council, has the power to bring this topic as they’re in charge of the budgeting for the school and changing school policies. Do you believe that phones should be allowed in school during our free time such as during nutrition and lunch?
We know that as seniors, we are soon to be leaving & once we are gone this policy won’t affect us anymore. We believe that for future students, they should be allowed to use their phones during lunch because it will give the students a break as we are in class for 7 hours and about an hour in nutrition and lunch. Class is full of stress and sometimes is very tiring. Shouldn’t students be given a chance to use their phones at least for a short amount of time? Although those that argue against the phone policy believe social media causes socialization issues, Ms. Moreno, the 12th grade English teacher, commented that socialization issues aren’t brought about because of social media but what had the most effect “due to quarantine, students are more awkward than usual and missed a couple of years on socializing.”
Although it can help socialization, some believe it tends to do the opposite. 11th grade English teacher, Mr. Paranjpe, leans toward the idea that the phone policy set at Neuwirth is effective “as phones take away from students socializing and building up skills in communication.”
The biggest concern for most of the teachers is cyberbullying - it's one of the biggest obstacles into why this policy hasn’t been changed but acknowledging that banning phones during school does not prevent cyberbullying at Neuwirth. A report within the U.S Study of Education received data that schools with policies like Neuwirth, with a 6 year difference from allowing phones during breaks to prohibiting phones during break, principals saw their data change as they reported “they never had to report cyberbullying” with a 18.6% decrease. Most schools saw that restricting phone use during breaks actually caused an increase in cyberbullying rather than a decrease in it. Schools with these rules had a higher percentage of cyberbullying than those that didn’t have any rules in place with cell phone policies.
We continuously work hard inside the classroom environment completing our assignments and staying on task in back to back classes but get no privileges for our good acts. Ms. Dagnino, our school principal, took the time to answer a few of our questions and expressed appreciation for “the amount of participation and how respectful students have been with rules with some minor exceptions.” Because Ms. Dagnino knows students don’t know much of what happens behind rules, she explained to us that policies are not set in place by just her; she works with the rest of the administration to hear their opinions first. The majority opinion goes.
So what does the future hold? Staff has been working on giving students more opportunities to use our cell phones - like the new prizes in the Boxer Bodega. By testing out how it goes with the one week cell phone pass during lunch, and seeing if there are any breaks in regulation, there have been thoughts and consideration to slowly adjust this policy.