Walking the halls of Tele with a pass has become a necessity in the 2024-2025 school year, but this has raised the amount of passes being stolen and misplaced by students. The 2022-2023 school year is when the idea of teachers having their own pass was introduced.

The years prior, students were able to ask teachers to go to the bathroom and leave the classroom for as long as they wanted. With no way of actually knowing what class students had, the deans’ only option was to tell students to go back to the classroom.

Since then, bathroom passes have been mandatory. When asked about why passes were implemented, Principal Shepard stated, “The passes were to serve the purpose of keeping track of what class students had while they were in the halls.” This would allow deans to expedite the process of students getting back to their classrooms.

In the last two years at Tele, we have seen a rise in missing passes. Many students have been in a situation where they ask their teachers to use the bathroom, but the teacher doesn’t have one because they don’t know where they are. As an alternative, teachers have been supplied with color paper where they write their names and the child’s name that is going to the bathroom, along with their signature, but this has led to another issue that advisors have to find a solution for, as these papers are not always easily accessible. 

Once students receive these written passes, it gives them the opportunity to use the bathroom. “Some students would keep the paper passes, giving them the opportunity to skip all their classes, and that is why we rip them up” says School Aide Ms. Vitaliti. 

The carelessness of the students has also led to the downfall of the bathroom pass’ original plan of keeping track of students’ classes. It isn’t a secret that with the use of headphones, phones, and simply a lack of care, bathroom passes have been scooped up by students that don’t have the teacher of the pass they have taken.

However, when asked, teachers who are patrolling the hallways say they feel “unbothered” by the new strict bathroom policy and constantly enforce it in their own classroom environments.

We see that the new bathroom policy hasn’t affected the teachers as much, but how has it affected the lives of the students? The students believe the bathroom pass is effective but does also take away from class due to some of the implications. “I left the pass at the bathroom one day, walked all the way to my class and realized I didn’t have the pass, and I had to walk all the way back to get it,” Dlal Elssaid said. It is evident that these passes take away from class time, especially because there is a maximum of two students who can be in the bathroom at one time.

However, this wasn’t always the case; students were able to walk into the bathroom no matter how many went in previously. As a result, there would be smoking, vandalism, and overall trashing of the school property. This was around the time of the viral TikTok trend called “hitting a devious lick,” where students would record themselves going into their school bathroom to steal, vandalize, or simply cause havoc.

As a result of bathroom passes being required, students have found a way to make profit off these bathroom passes. The newspaper had a chance to talk to one of the students to reflect on how it was selling the bathroom passes. When asked how the seller would find buyers, he stated, “It was super easy. At the start, the school would give out substitute passes when students would ask to leave the room. These passes had black writing on them, and all you had to do was wipe alcohol on it, and the name would come off. Once I did that, all I had to do was find someone who was willing to purchase the pass while I was walking in the hallway.” The price for these passes would range from five to 25 dollars.

I got a chance to sit with Ms. Dumaresq to discuss how she has noticed different grade levels are acting with the new bathroom policy and how it affects her day-to-day. She reinforced her perspective on the policy by stating she believes it is mandatory for ninth graders to follow this policy because they “abuse the bathroom,” due to the fact that they roam the halls, steal bathroom passes, and don’t go to classes. However, for the 12th graders, when they come inside the college office and need to use the bathroom, “it is annoying to always have to find the pass for them to use.” She also acknowledges it is hard for the bathroom monitors to differentiate who is coming from a class or a meeting in the college office, but believes “seniors should be able to use the bathroom when they feel like going.”

We also got a chance to ask about the ramifications for when a bathroom pass is missing. Ms. Dumaresq stated, “Teachers have to send out whole-staff emails, which all of administration sees, to alert them to look out for that specific pass and return it to its owner.”

To sum up how Ms. Dumaresq is affected by the bathroom pass policy, she said, “Overall, it doesn’t add stress on my day-to-day, but what does add stress is all the ninth graders wanting to leave the room and potentially never coming back.”

With rumors of Tele possibly going to a digital hall pass next year looming, the school knows that a response to this hall pass debacle is necessary.