On my way to school this morning I was listening to my favorite radio station 101.1 WCBSFM.  The radio host asked listeners to call in to share what the most annoying rule their school had.  One man phoned in, recalling his time in high school where his music teacher made his students use an actual toilet seat as a bathroom pass.  “Was it at least cushioned?” joked the host. 

 Long gone are the times where dragging around a fragile paperweight, a laminated card with sharp edges, or in that radio caller’s case, a toilet seat, allowed you to pursue a journey to the bathroom: COVID-19 pushed us towards the era of digital bathroom passes.  Recently, students at Stamford High have been introduced to a new bathroom pass policy—students are required to fill out a digital Minga pass on the sign-out kiosk within their class and then take a lanyard, color coded to their building along with their room number attached—just to leave the classroom to then search for a bathroom that isn’t locked.    

The abrupt introduction of this policy has created speculation throughout the student body, including complaints about the inconsistency of reform concerning the bathrooms and with many describing this new method of bathroom passes for students to be unsanitary and excessive.  In reality, what really works? How much is too much?  As my fellow staff writer Mia Davis wrote in her article, “Is school the new surveillance state?”.  Well it just might be.

Imagine this: You just finished your morning coffee and you need to relieve yourself.  You go to fill out a Minga pass on the class kiosk, to which you are met with an error message.  You inform the teacher, who then stops the lesson to make a pass for you.  Next, you grab one of the two lanyards hanging by the door, there are supposed to be three, but one went missing.  You go to the nearest bathroom on your floor. Locked.  You try the next one.  Also locked.  You finally find an unlocked bathroom on a different floor.  Where do you put the lanyard while you do your business? The floor will suffice, that puddle of water is probably from the sink.  You finally make it back to class and shoot, you’re past the seven minutes pass time. A few minutes later an ominous email regarding your whereabouts lands in your inbox.  The contents of the email look like this:

The four hypotheticals provided in the email are assumptive and accusatory.  It strongly suggests that you are being monitored from the moment you leave your class to the moment you return, which poses the question: are we? And if we are, does it work at the least?   

To answer these questions, I conducted an in-person anonymous random survey where I asked 30 Stamford High students if they thought that this new bathroom pass policy was effectively managing and regulating where and when students do and don’t go within the school.  About 80% of students told me no, that it was ineffective and nothing had changed, opposed to the 20% who saw a difference.

I then asked two follow-up questions about how they felt about their experience and surroundings at SHS concerning the bathroom pass policy:

Do you feel that eliminating encountering people in hallways and bathrooms ultimately takes out of the high school experience demonstrated in pop culture and the media?

60% said yes, 40% said no.

In your opinion, do these surveillance tactics concerning this policy make Stamford High a more negative environment or a more positive environment?

33.3% said more positive environment, 66.67% said more negative environment.

While conducting this survey, I received some comments from students who felt strongly about this new policy.  I asked for their consent to be named and quoted in this article.  Stamford High senior Laeliah Bailey said “It feels controlling.  The emails I get are uncanny, like, are they watching where I go?”, and Stamford High junior Sebastian Rosa said “It makes me feel like I can’t be trusted.  High school is about developing independence and responsibility.  If they can’t even let me leave to use the bathroom without being monitored, how am I supposed to feel like I can be trusted with more important matters?”.  

Ask anyone in the school if they’ve had problems with Minga, and you will almost always hear a yes.  Implementing a complicated system just to leave the classroom that students don’t even use is a waste of time, money, and resources.  Eliminating these unrealistic monitoring and observation methods regarding bathroom passes provides students the opportunity to practice accountability, allowing them to build independent responsibility before entering the workforce.