Shut Up and Sign In

A harsh punishment has been implemented as an attempt to get students to sign themselves in. Sure, the punishment is steep: a month without a lunch pass for signing someone else in; but is it really that hard to highlight your own name on a piece of paper?

No, it’s not. The sign-in sheet is three feet away from the door when you walk in every single day to get into school. There is absolutely no excuse to forget to sign in: walk three feet, pick up a highlighter and find your name. If it’s this easy, why are people still forgetting, and if it is their fault that they aren’t signing in, why are people complaining about this punishment?

At the Friday Lunch Event on Dec. 5, David Wagstaff, Dean of Students, made an announcement expressing his dissatisfaction with the failing job the students are doing with signing in, to say it mildly. He gave the incentive of a lesser punishment when the students finally achieve a perfect week. Stop complaining and just sign in five measly times.

Sure, a few years ago, the front desk receptionist would sign people in, and that seemed to work great! But that obviously couldn’t last. The front desk receptionist has work to do, too! To help you understand, let’s put this in the form of a story math problem.

If the front desk receptionist can sign students in at a rate of one student per minute, and he has to sign in 88 students in the period of 50 minutes, how much time would be left over for the receptionist to do their own work? The answer? Negative 38 minutes.

So obviously, that had to change. The current front desk receptionist, Revan Williams, agrees with me.

“With kids coming in 20 at a time around class time, it would be incredibly difficult for anyone except the kids to sign them in,” Williams said.

Might I say that what I quoted was his second statement. I had to ask him to tone down the language to something publishable, the first time around.

So, now what? Spend thousands of dollars to install a thumbprint scanner that students have to hit to get in the door? Or, in my opinion, the logical solution, make the students sign themselves in! GENIUS! Who would have thought of that?

If you are now thinking that signing yourself in is too much of an inconvenience, take a look at another math problem.

If a student has 50 minutes in the morning, and it takes them an average of one minute (and I am being generous here) to sign themselves in, how much time will they have left to socialize and finish work they procrastinated on after completing their task? The answer? Forty-nine minutes, basically the entire time.

The punishment is harsh, but it does its job. It makes people scared of not signing in. Maybe slowly, but the punishment is working. According to Williams, no one has had their lunch pass taken for a month for signing someone else in.

I just don’t understand why people are making such a big deal out of highlighting your name on a sheet of paper. Just to clear this up, I am not saying that forgetting once or twice is wrong, or even a bad thing. Just stop complaining about it.