Since the 2018-2019 school year, students have been made to wear their school IDs, visible at all times during the day. Earlier this month, the administration took significant steps to put an emphasis on this policy by checking each student for their ID at every entrance before school and implementing an announcement to go off before every bell, reminding students to put their IDs back on. 

This policy has been instituted as a safety measure, however, many students see it as more of a hindrance than a help. Almost every one of my classmates has complained to me at length about how annoying and useless they find this rule, and quite frankly I find the complaints more irritating than the policy. 

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Why is it so hard to put on a lanyard every day before school? Is a piece of plastic the size of a credit card hanging around your neck really that annoying?

A lot of these complaints come from the fact that many students don’t see how the IDs are helping school security, even though the administration has stated multiple times that the purpose of the policy is to make sure that every person in the building is either a student or staff member. I know that many students feel like that isn’t as big of an issue, however, we need to understand that the policy wasn’t just made to annoy students, and there was an actual, valid, reason for it. 

It’s a bit disappointing to see how many students have reacted to this policy, going out of their way to evade the system as much as they can. Reusing temporary IDs, wearing old ones instead of their current one, and so on and so forth. Some students are putting more effort into getting away with not having to wear their IDs than it takes to wear it. 

Keep it with your phone, if that will help you remember to grab it in the morning. Put it in your backpack the second you get home, so you can just pull it out when you get to class. Do whatever you need to help you remember to bring it, because it doesn’t take much responsibility to remember to wear your ID badge to school every day. 

School administration shouldn’t have to work this hard to make high-schoolers do something as simple as wear a badge every day. Some of us are already legal adults and the rest are going to be soon enough. It’s embarrassing that our assistant principals have to stand at every entrance and remind us before every period to do something this small. The constant complaining is getting exhausting, and it isn’t accomplishing anything. 

If you really feel so passionate about not having to wear your ID, come up with a system you think will better help school security, and propose your idea to the administration. If you’re not able to come up with a realistic proposal, or aren’t willing to, then stop complaining about the system that we do have.