Northwest High School’s main priority has always been to protect their students. In the past few years, we have seen many ways this has been updated and enforced. For example, checking ID’s at football games and our recent safety feature from last year, the metal detectors. The newest addition we have is the policy that we must wear our ID’s on school lanyards while being inside of the school. 

During my other years of attending Northwest, you always had to receive an ID. It had a few main purposes like scanning the barcode for breakfast in the morning and giving solid proof that you were an upperclassman so you could get back into the school during lunch. Now it’s purpose is to ensure that you’re a student at the school, not a random person wandering the hallways. Continuously wearing the ID was created as a policy because of the increased amount of dangers happening inside of schools over the past few years. 

Although it can be seen as a way to keep students and staff safe inside of the school, it has proven to have many faults as well. A main issue with the new policy is the fact that if you happen to forget your ID at home one day, you must go to security and buy a new one. This can be incredibly inconvenient for some if they happen to be running late, they’d have to stand in a line to get themselves another ID. This also brings up the problem of money issues and not being able to buy yourself a new one every time you accidentally forget yours.  

Another disadvantage with the ID system is that they can be incredibly uncomfortable which causes many disturbances. The lanyard material can scratch against your neck, or be pulled if it’s accidentally caught on something. There’s also been instances of the lanyard getting stuck in long amounts of hair, and that’s never fun to untangle. 

Lastly though, the central problem regarding the ID’s is always having to wear them around our necks. Having them in our hands seems like it’d be obvious that we do go to the school. So when teachers consistently tell us in the hallway to put them on, it can seem pointless. 

There are quite a few things that could be taken into account to make the system easier for both parties. For instance, allowing the students the choice to bring their own type of lanyard. That could fix the issue of discomfort, seeing as you could choose your own material. Another solution could potentially be giving a little more leniency towards people who do forget their ID. Just like with tardies, you’re given a few free passes before it’s a lunch detention, that system could be tested with the IDs. So while many dislike this new policy, there’s several ways to update the conditions so that both the student body and faculty are content, and our safety is ensured.