It’s 8:02 and you JUST missed the bell. Instead of opening the door for you, your teacher redirects you to a tardy station down the hall. You sigh, frustrated, as you walk to the back of the long line. You start to wonder if you should have run down the hallway faster to get to class on time. But here you are, still late.

Sound familiar? This is the reality of Hayfield’s “tardy stations.” According to our acting principal, Mathew Mough, tardy stations were implemented to “address growing issues of student on- time attendance.” But have they worked? I don’t think so.

I think that waiting for a student to come back from a line at a tardy station can delay the start of a class, or even cause an interruption during class in some cases. But I do think they are aptly named, because if you have to stand in the back of a long line, you are only going to become even more tardy the longer you wait. I believe tardy stations are very flawed and many of my peers agree. In a survey I designed with the intent to get peer feedback about the effectiveness of tardy stations, 67.6% of students said tardy stations do not motivate them to get to class on time. 

This is a striking result to me because this indicates that tardy stations aren’t working as they were intended to work. When I asked if they were effective, a lot of students said they were not. When I asked why, students gave a lot of good reasons. For example, Andrew Banocy, a high school senior, wrote that tardy stations “are often not competent enough to grab students who are roaming the halls.” Parker Sauer, a sophomore, made another great point, saying tardy stations are only a “slap on the wrist” for students “who think school is a joke.” Furthermore, when I asked if tardy stations keep you all out of class for too long, 87.1% of students said yes. And that’s not all. One of you even said that the tardy station by our cafeteria said they weren’t even a tardy station! It is very clear to me that there are issues with our tardy stations.

Our acting principal, however, will not acknowledge these issues. He believes we are not being “respectful” of the system. I believe that Mr. Mough needs to open up his mind to the very real issues of the tardy station system. I believe that he needs to consider the possibility that students would rather just come to class and be marked tardy than have to wait in a long line at a tardy station. Many students made this point clear in their responses to my survey.  I hope Mr. Mough will consider our opinions and make changes that will be more effective.