Along with the new year comes many new school policies for Towson High. The most prominent this year was a new rule on bathroom usage, which prevents students from using the bathroom in the first and last 10 minutes of class. The goal of the policy is to stop students from leaving class early to wander the halls and miss class, under the pretense of using the bathroom.  

According to Mrs. Zava, English Department Chair, “There were students wandering the hallways, and it was a concern because we as teachers want the students to be in class learning.” So as a result, the administration got together to find a way to keep students in class more often.  

They worked out a solution in the form of a new hall pass system, and the ban on students leaving class in the ten-minute window.  All teachers now have new hall passes that students are required to carry, and in-class sign out sheets are seeing greater usage to make records of how long a student was out of class.  

The new changes have been met with some mixed responses from the student body. Some students don’t care, as the policy has had little to no impact on their school day, but others have had some complaints about the restrictions. “Sometimes after C-lunch I’ll get back to class and find that I need to use the bathroom in the last ten minutes,” vents Glenn Young, junior. “It’s just an unnecessary interruption to my day.”   

This is also compounded by the fact that there is little time to use the bathroom in between classes, leaving students with the choice, risk being late to class, or wait another ten minutes. This, of course, won’t be much more than a minor inconvenience for students throughout the year.  

Overall it will be interesting to see the effects of the policy in the long term. It’s a small step of progress that the administration is taking to improve the school in the long run. It seems like a simple and easy fix to reduce the amount of hallway wandering, and it just might be the solution the school needed.  

Note: These changes do not affect students who have documented permission to leave class.