In our current state of technology, most families are doing away with their old house phones and relying primarily on their cell phones for communication.  By taking a student’s phone from them, we are taking away their only form of communication in the event of an emergency.  What if your child (or future child) was in a near-fatal car accident and had no means of calling for help because their phone was sitting in an administrator’s desk?  Death, ladies and gentlemen, is not a punishment we should wish on any student for texting in class. 

    Although the new cell phone policy is very clearly a wonderful addition to our ever-growing student handbook, some people are perturbed over this new change.  Jack McCarthy (Senior at DB) says that the new policy is “Scammin’ little kids.”  Jack’s motivation behind these harsh words is the financial crisis that many families are suffering from.  Other nay-sayers wonder where the money will go. Will it go straight into or administrator’s pockets, or will it go towards our school’s enhancement and beautification?  Quite frankly, I believe this is irrelevant information.  We have a privilege.  Now it is our job to take advantage of it.

   Our principals at D-B have decided that having no bells will make for a smoother school day and environment.  In my opinion, though, no bells is just asking for complete commotion in our school with getting students to classes on time.  During an interview with Asst. Principal Mr. Brown, he gave us his reasoning behind removing the school bells.  “Having no bells is preparing students for college and the work force; there are no bells in real life.  You don’t need a bell to tell you it’s time to go to your movie or tell you when it’s time to go to church,” Mr. Brown stated as his number one reason in removing the bells.  Mr. Brown’s second reason stated was, “Due to singletons and lunches, unnecessary bells were having to ring that didn’t apply to all students, thus disturbing students and teachers from their classes.”  I agree with Mr. Brown on the fact that there are no bells in life and you have to be responsible for yourself, no one is going to tell you when you have to be somewhere at a certain time all your life. 

   On the other hand, D-B has almost two thousand students to keep in line, and the bells helped ensure all students were where they were supposed to be on time.  Some problems I see with having no bells are people being late to their classes by mistake, teachers holding classes over, and students not knowing what time it really is.  Not knowing the time is an issue even I have trouble with without the school bells.  I used to live off the minute bell so I could still chat with my friends and make it to class on time.  The student handbook states that cell phones are not allowed to be used for any reason during school.  In today’s society, most teens don’t wear watches to tell time they use their cells phones, and even adults have started to ditch watches and use their cell phones instead.  At D-B however, we’re not allowed to pull out our cell phones and check the time to see if we’re going to be late to class or not. 

   Also, the clocks in the hallways are all set on different times and do not correspond to the clocks on the classroom TVs.  So, if our school is going to practice having no bells, students should at least be allowed to check the time on their phones in between classes and then turn them off upon arrival to class.  This way, students can check the right time and arrive to class on time and phones can still be turned off while classes are in session.  Another way to fix the time problem is to synchronize all the hallway clocks with the TV clock so there is no confusion.

    I do agree there are no bells in the real world, but this is a high school with a huge student body.  I don’t think it’s possible for over a thousand students to get to their classes on time, while stopping and chatting with friends along the way, without minute bells and tardy bells.