Hall passes unnecessarily complicate restroom breaks

It is time to abolish the green paper hall pass. In the past, if a student wanted to use the restroom, they took a laminated hall pass with the room number on it. And if a student needed to go to the office, they got a green slip. What made it a good system was how it gave both teachers and students control. Teachers got to control when to summon a student to the office, and students had control over when they could use the restroom. Today’s green slips serve no purpose other than to fill up trash cans and inconvenience the teacher. 

Teachers generally do not like being disrupted, especially for the restroom. When they are forced to write up a green slip for every student who has to go, it wastes everyone’s time. The teacher has to stop the lesson in order to write a pass, and the student has to wait for the teacher. Because teachers always have to write a fresh pass for every student, it breaks up the flow of class time and forces students to wait. 

Green slips are also easily abused. So much time is spent just on writing them up, and so little time is spent on actually using them. All a student has to do to prove they have a green slip is to wave it at a campus supervisor. No inspection. Just a casual check for a green paper, which was the same action students had to do with laminated hall passes. There is no reason for teachers to write up slips, or even use them for that matter, if all it is doing is being a worse version of the hall pass.

Of course, here comes the age-old argument of “just use the restroom before class” or ”hold it in a little longer,” which is a fair point. Most students are capable of doing both things before class starts, either during the eight-minute passing period or extended learning. But while it is up to the student to use the restroom before or after class, nobody has control over when they are ready to use the restroom. Although most students are capable of “holding it in,” it creates unnecessary discomfort. 

All slips do is disrupt class time and slow down what should be a simple procedure for going to the restroom. The easiest solution to mitigate wasted class time and paper is to revert back to the laminated hall passes and sign-in sheets. That way, teachers can both continue teaching without interruption and keep track of all students exiting and reentering the classroom. But if there is any silver lining with the slips, it is that they look pretty snazzy when mixed in with all the other trash in the bin.