Towson High school has implemented a social eligibility for athletics events, starting today on December 13th 2023. The description of social eligibility will be the ability to go to athletic events depending on your grades, suspension level, and your tardiness. This will either make students boycott or not attend athletic events or will make tardiness and misbehavior in school decline. However the belief of this is really unsupported and seems more like a domino effect going into effect for the worst.
One of the main reasons why social eligibility was implemented was because of the sheer amount of misbehavior in Towson High School. The administration team had noticed this and so they decided to put two and two together. If lots of students are misbehaving but they are going to athletic events, putting a barrier on this will most likely change some statistics in the minds of the administration. But however, most of these requirements can seem too harsh.
A cause for not meeting social eligibility could be as simple as having too many tardies. This is unfair to the students because most of the time, it is not the fault of the student, why they are late is because of their parents or another adult such as a bus driver or a guardian, or a talkative teacher in the hall, stopping the student to chat as their chances of being tardy increase. Most students come late anyways because of the extremely early time they have to wake up for school that can range around as 7 am to 4 am. Every hallway in Towson high school is busy, with many students flooding it, all 1400 of us cramped into the halls and expected to reach on time in 5 minutes.
Passing classes in Towson High school depends on the level of the class. If you have a class you are confident in or just a class you feel that is easy, you are most likely to pass it, however if you are in an GT class, or a class you have like no experience in, you are pressured harder. This can lead to you failing a class that you can’t grasp and you will be punished for it. Especially since missing work can take such a heavy toll on a grade, a 95 can become a 70 overnight and then could become a 59 without you realizing. Classes are also very long in Towson high school up to 80 minutes making you feel stressed out and a need to walk going into my next point.
Skipping class is mostly taken as a sign of misbehavior and rebellion but to some students it is literally just an escape from your classroom. Having to sit in a class for at least 80 minutes 4 times a day with a small lunch break is actually crazy. So a reasonable solution would be to take a hall pass for a break for a little while refocusing your thoughts. But however, it has commonly been only used for the bathroom or to get some water. It says “hall pass”, for a reason, to be used for doing things revolving around hallway activities. Personally, I feel like taking like 7 minutes to refresh your thoughts, by walking in the hallway, should not be punished with an hour long meaningless detention.
Another point, is that these sporting events could be one of the only time, friends or family could make plans to see each other, so this is a very personal topic for some people. Maybe watching the sport being played could inspire students to take school more seriously, but social eligibility prevents that from happening. I also think this is set up for failure because there will be a crack in the system, like every other thing in Towson High School.
