Ask any teacher in Lafayette to go to the bathroom and they will all say the same thing, “Sure, sign out and take the hall pass.” This seems reasonable until you realize that the hall pass is used by absolutely everyone who leaves that classroom. This means that no matter where you’re going when you leave the room, you are carrying a laminated sheet of bacteria.  You are carrying the same pass that was brought into the bathroom by a classmate twenty minutes before you left. This is highly unsanitary and a very probable cause of the constant circulation of germs and even sickness in our school. Lafayette student, Brittany Nguyen, says “Every time I grab the hall pass I feel like I’m picking up tons of germs”.

A form of hall pass is obviously necessary to keep students in check when they leave the classroom. Lafayette’s current hall pass system is a color-coded piece of laminated paper that coordinates which general area you should be in, and where you are coming from. This allows for some control over students leaving the room, however, many students roam the hallways all class or leave the building altogether, so clearly, this system isn’t perfect. This means there is room for many new options; ones that are much cleaner.

One solution is a hall pass that is disposable after use. Something like a post-it note that has to be signed by the teacher of the room you are leaving. Students will ask to leave the room, grab a post-it (or any piece of paper that is decided on to be used), have it signed (along with time of leaving), and they will leave for their destination. Once they return, they can throw away their pass. This limits the spread of germs.

Some may say this doesn’t work because students can easily dispose of their pass once they leave the classroom since it is just a piece of paper. This is true, however, this is also true for the passes we have now. Like I mentioned before, many students ditch class each day. Unless there is some high-security system placed in our school, students roaming and/or ditching is inevitable. In the meantime, we need to improve the conditions for students that actually use the pass responsibly by implementing a cleaner hall pass system.