Johnny Dripdrop is in the middle of his English class, watching the second hand slowly tick across the clock, when he decides to head out for some fresh air. When he is halfway out the door, his teacher, Mrs. Passmore, stops him, telling him he needs a pass. Shuffling through the mountain of papers on her desk, riffling through her many drawers, she finally finds it, the corner of a pink laminated slip poking out from under the edge of her desk. She tugs it out by its black lanyard, handing it to Johnny, who tries to ignore the questionable stains on the plastic covering, keeping it at arms length as he heads out the door.
Stevenson has installed a new policy where students have to receive a pass from their teacher before stepping out in the halls during the given class period. This policy was implemented to reduce the number of students in the halls during class time. Teachers can hand these out by using disposable pink paper slips, which waste time, forcing all students to pause and wait as the teacher signs the pass, interrupting the entire rhythm of the class. These few seconds can add up over the course of the day, interrupting every period.
Teachers have realized this, and some have switched to the dreaded alternative to paper—a laminated pink pass with a lanyard threaded through it, used throughout all their class periods. But this solution creates a new problem, sanitation. The same pass makes it through the unwashed hands of countless students, in and out of the bathroom.
From a study done by the National Institute of Health, when you flush a toilet, 140,000 microdroplets of toilet water spray into the air, landing on the surrounding surfaces. These passes may save paper, but they spread germs instead.
More importantly, the passes do little to achieve their intended purpose. If students want to meet up with friends in the hallway, they can do it just as easily with a pass or without one—the only difference is that they’re now holding a piece of pink plastic. Students can simply ask their teachers for a pass, then slip out of the room to meet with their friends. Security guards are supposed to roam the halls, keeping unsavory behavior under wraps, but students can simply claim it’s their lunch or free period, and there is no feasible way to fact check every student.
The policy treats students like children rather than teeangers—going to the bathroom is a basic right, not a privilege, and restricting it creates a barrier in trust between students and staff. If Stevenson doesn’t trust their high school students to safely traverse the halls, how can they trust them to organize events and run clubs? Stevenson cannot claim to prepare students for independence in college or different industries while forcing them to interrupt class to ask permission for something so simple. In real life, no boss will stop an employee in the hall, asking them if they have a bathroom pass, and no professor will stop in the middle of their lecture to write one out.
High school is supposed to offer freedom and maturity, a chance for students to find their own balance in preparation for the real world. This means fostering independence and encouraging self responsibility, especially since students all need these skills in order to successfully manage their time. But bathroom passes don’t teach responsibility, they replace it with compliance. Instead of reminding students about time management, the policy sends the message that Stevenson does not believe its students can handle the freedom of walking down a hallway.
If Stevenson wants every person to embody the Portrait of a Graduate—commitment to self, others, and learning—it needs to reflect that trust in their policies. Bathroom passes do not help students become more responsible, they just reduce the definition of responsibility to a laminated slip. Stevenson students deserve policies that challenge them to grow, not ones that assume they can’t. All this policy teaches us is how to juggle a pink pass without touching the stains.