Written By: Sanai Spooner
Many schools around the country have implemented newer and harsher regulations. Newly required uniforms, phone pouches to keep a student’s phone locked, routinely closed bathrooms, and so forth. Even within Port Chester High School, austerity has been executed in its new rules: round-the-clock hall monitors, keeping students on schedule at all times and security at all outside exits of the school, just to name a couple. Failure to comply with these newer regulations has resulted in punishment, such as detention and suspensions. Today’s questions are — Has PCHS really followed the trend of becoming a “stricter” school? How do our students really feel about this? What kind of impact has this made on the school as a whole?
Some students have felt that the school has become stricter and has garnered a negative impression. An anonymous student says, “The school is definitely stricter. It isn’t bad because they are keeping the school in check, but it’s bad because most rules are unnecessary. Locked bathrooms are not a solution.” This has led some of the student body to feel concerned about the potential power dynamics in the building.
Other students agree that though this school has become stricter, it’s not necessarily negative. One student states, “I feel that school has definitely become less strict regarding the comparison to corporal punishment, and though the school has implemented harsher rules, it is a necessary response to how our peers have acted in the past year.”
Based on the mixed opinions of the student body, students cannot unanimously agree on whether these rules have made a positive or negative difference, yet faculty and students alike all agree that Port Chester High School has definitely gotten stricter.