Tardy sweeps are absolutely ridiculous. They are total wastes of time, and do nothing but put more students into detention.

Lately, the school has been having tardy sweeps. This causes chaos in the morning as students rush to their classes. Those who are not lucky enough get detention or Thursday school.

In case you have no idea what these horrible things are, tardy sweeps are kind of like school drills–kind of–that we usually have for first period. Fifteen minutes after first period starts, all teachers are told to lock their doors through the intercom system. Students who have the misfortune of being locked out of class must go to the multipurpose room to get a tardy slip. Once they get this, they may enter class.

Why do we have it?

“There’s an attendance issue,” Kraig Jorgensen, assistant principal, said. “It’s required by law to be on time.”

Jorgensen also said the first 15 minutes of class are important. This explains why tardy sweeps begin 15 minutes after the first class of the day starts, but having students walk all the way to the multipurpose room and back wastes the time that they could be using productively in class.

Sometimes, it’s not the student’s fault for being late! They’re either held back by traffic, have other siblings who refuse to wake up or take eternity getting ready for school, or his/her parent(s) doesn’t care if he/she is late or not. It’s unfair for the school to punish students for something they may not have control of.

“I overslept,” Luis Michel, a student who’s occasionally late, said.

According to a couple of students who observed the first period tardy sweep outside of their classroom walls, most of the students they interviewed claimed they were late due to oversleeping.

Tardy sweeps really are pointless. No matter how many we have, students will still forget to set their alarm, rush out of the house because they woke up late, suffer through traffic, and so on. The school does not have control over these little things, and they can’t expect to. It’s like trying to stop it from raining outside.

What matters is if students go to school at all.

So here’s an idea: no more tardy sweeps! It’s a waste of time and energy.