On the morning of November 12, as school started, a long line of students formed at Jackson-Reed’s main entrance due to a new security policy. For the time being, students must take their laptops out of their bags upon arrival due to prior incidents of hidden items, such as vapes, in computers that were not detected by the X-ray machines.
Due to the ongoing attempts to bring various banned objects into school, which are recorded in administration’s Student Behavior Tracker, the decision to implement this new policy has been continuously discussed. Director of Culture Stephon Seraile said he and his security team were “going to see how things were going” but then “continued to see enough [confiscations] to think about and make sure that everybody feels safe in the building.”
“We want to maintain a safe learning environment at Jackson-Reed and we regularly look for ways to improve our safety measures,” said Principal Sah Brown. He added that the procedure is a common method used in airports, further contributing to rationale to implement it.
Whether or not the policy will take a more permanent role at JR depends on “if there’s a decrease in [attempts and confiscations]. It’s not something we hope to do in the long term, but the hope is that other students use their voice,” said Seraile. Additionally, he hopes that students encourage others not to bring in vapes and other products, and that the new procedure will raise awareness of the health risks that come with vaping.
The new policy gained mixed reactions from students. Freshman My Hoang said that the security policy “should be done to ensure that nothing dangerous gets into the school building and for everyone at school to feel safe.” However, freshman Max Greene said “I’m not really a big fan of [the new policy] because I feel like everyone’s paying the price for a few people making bad decisions.”
“People are just going to find new ways to sneak stuff in,” added sophomore Paulina Afonsky.
Many students agreed that their main concern is the added time spent in line to enter the building. “It just takes much longer for students to get into school. I know some students that didn’t get in until 20 minutes into first period,” said freshman Lars Schneider, in reference to the first day the procedure was enforced. Senior Eden Grim added, “I already have to take off everything to go through security and take things out of my bag—it just adds more time.”
In order to combat the policy’s impact on longer lines, Seraile and his team plan to display signs, alert students when they enter the building to take out their computers early, and send notices home to parents. However, he added that the long lines are similar to what happens after the introduction of anything new, such as the long lines that occur at the start of each school year. “I think over time it will settle down and smooth itself out.”
