The clock is ticking, your heart is racing, you see the classroom door, but the bell rings, and now you’re tardy. It’s a familiar scene, especially at Rocky Mountain High School, and when you’re tardy, the punishment is detention. At Rocky Mountain though, there is a simple procedure that can erase your tardy and eliminate your detention.
Tardies are easy enough to get. “I got one, just cause I was taking way too long to fill up my water bottle,” said Ben Angell, a junior at Rocky. “I have also been late to school because my brother is terrible at driving,” he went on to say.
The process to remove them is simple enough. In the first ten minutes of their lunch break, students must go down to the security office and fill out a form. On the form they must fill in which class they missed, and why they missed it. Ben has only had to serve about 30 minutes of detention for his many tardies because of this form. “I have filled that form out plenty of times, that’s the reason I don’t have detention more.” I personally have used this form to get out of detention multiple times, and think it is a good measure to help students who might just be having a bad day and got to school late, but I have found that this system is constantly abused as it relies heavily on students telling the truth. “No one tells the truth on those forms,” Ben said. When asked if he tells the truth he said, “Of course, I never lie,”
So, if students can just fill out a form to avoid detention, what’s the point of giving it out for tardies? All this practice is doing is allowing students to show up to class late with meaningless consequences. I am not advocating for the removal of the form, but some safeguards should be put in place to prevent fraud. Perhaps they could put a limit on how many times a month someone can erase their detention.
