Students at VHS must carry passes with their first and last name, classroom room number, date, time and the place they are headed

In the second semester of the 2021-22 school year, a new school rule was enforced. The new school wide rule had teachers writing green paper passes and students bringing them wherever they go. Although the passes are mainly used for students to go to the bathroom, the green passes must be used for students to leave class and go anywhere at all. 

According to the VHS student handbook, “Students may not be out of class without a hall pass. Passes should not be issued during the first or last 10 minutes of class/period. Students who are absent or out of class for more than 30 minutes may be marked truant.”

The green passes are supposed to be signed by teachers to give permission to the student to leave class to their written destination. The passes can be checked by administration around campus to make sure the student is going to where they need to be. However, teachers signing each individual pass takes up a lot of time.

Roxanna Perez ‘23 isn’t a fan of the green passes, she said, “The green passes are really time consuming because the teacher has to stop teaching to write out the pass.”

The passes, more often than not, take up double the time to write out than just sending the student off to the bathroom. Most teachers don’t even like writing the passes out. Not to mention that each pass is a single use item. The amount of paper being wasted by these passes has to add up overtime.

Dominic Villalpando ‘23 said, “They’re annoying, it’s really annoying to write them out and I honestly think we should go back to the wood ones. A lot of the teachers have been complaining about the passes too. Like some teachers made their green pass dry erase so they didn’t have to keep writing them.”

So what is the positive side to the passes? Well the passes do cover some safety concerns around campus. Having students’ names and room numbers written on them can be beneficial to administrators but the passes are unfortunately easy to recreate.

“The passes aren’t really a good safety concern because students can just grab a stack of passes and keep writing them for themselves. It would honestly be super easy to just fake a pass,” said Villalpando.

The most beneficial thing for the student body would ultimately be to go back to wooden bathroom passes. These types of passes are easier for students and teachers to use and harder for students to fake. 

“The wooden passes are better because they do the same thing as the green paper ones since they have the classroom number on them, but they are quicker than having to write out the green ones,” said Perez.