Starting second semester, LOHS administration has begun introducing some new policies to the school. Beginning with Joe’s Boathouse, students are now required to wear a lanyard if they want to be served at Joe’s. Continually, many English and History classes have begun handwriting their essays in order to avoid cheating using technology like ChatGPT. 

Many students are feeling very confused—if not angry—about these policies. The new hall policies are absolutely ridiculous. First of all, some teachers are simultaneously using the Joe’s pass as a bathroom pass, which is absolutely disgusting. 

Another thing that students and teachers have been fighting with: ChatGPT. As a society, we are starting to fear advancement. Since its foundation, most people immediately vilified ChatGPT. History and English teachers are starting to not allow students to type their essays, but to hand write them instead. It’s extremely inconvenient to hand write an essay, and it adds hours to my personal writing process. Continually, it’s not actually solving the problem of  ChatGPT being able to write full, well-formed essays. If students really wanted to cheat, they could use ChatGPT to write the essays, then use the draft to write the outline. 

Students have been taught to take care of themselves, and that we won’t have anyone to help us when we go to college. But then, policies completely undermine those ideas. Everyone has heard the stories of students who weren’t allowed to do what they wanted in high school and don’t know how to control themselves in college. Is that going to become a whole generation of students? We are still required to ask to do something as simple as go to the bathroom or get a drink of water. It’s infantilizing, and frankly, it’s getting old. 

As high school students, we still are being treated like elementary school students. Students who skip are told to go to detention, but half the time, the crew-time pass arrives while they are skipping. Students cheat on assignments, with or without ChatGPT. Students find their way around everything. These policies are reactive to new issues. We’ll find our way around this, just like we found our way around everything else.