Open Campus

Darian Kelly
Yearbook
5-16-17
Paper

North Idaho Christian School is a closed campus school, but should change so that at least seniors have an open campus. Closed campus means is that students are not allowed to leave campus once school starts till the last bell at 3:45 rings. And this means no students; elementary through seniors. Yes, even seniors who are most of the time 18 years of age and are legally full adults.
NICS has very strict rules for campus entry and exit; and for very good reason with all the evil in the world concerning kidnapping and what not. In fact, some might even praise NICS for their stringent rules pertaining to boundaries on when kids can leave. But not all of NICS students are kids anymore. Every year there is a new group of seniors, most of whom are 17 or 18. And at 18, you are considered a legal adult. At this age, one could expect (or at least hope to) that the young men and women at this age can make reasonable choices. By giving seniors the ability to make choices such as an open campus allowing them to leave when they feel it is necessary, you create an atmosphere of trust. A trust that gives seniors a sense of freedom that they have been awarded for their age and hopefully their accountability. It gives them real life experience in the fact that they are free to leave if they feel like it, just as it would be at a job when you are on a lunch break or the like.
At the school, you are not even allowed to park at the school BEFORE school hours and walk over for a coffee, say, at the dome with friends. If it is not school hours and not disturbing anyone, them NICS does not have the right to stop students (especially seniors) from doing with their time as they please. At lunch students are not allowed to leave to go grab a bite to eat, even if it is just across the road. In fact, students are not even allowed to walk out of the school into the parking lot without permission from a teacher or a secretary. Seniors should be allowed to go out to eat or drive down to a local park or something to eat their lunch or study for an upcoming test. Eating outside in a quiet park is a lot more enjoyable than eating in an overcrowded lunchroom or on the floor of a gym that has been around since the 70’s. The same goes for studying; a nice quiet setting such as a park or library is a lot nicer than a lunchroom with a lot of rowdy 7th and 8th graders.
Obviously there is the problem with seniors just not showing up for class after lunch or being tardy; obviously this is not acceptable. So what is the solution? One simple solution would to only allow seniors to miss or be tardy to a certain number of classes per semester. Students are allowed to miss a total of 8 days a semester whether excused or not; keep this rule for seniors, but change it to periods instead of days. For example, 8 days of allowed missed days x 7 periods a day = 56 periods of allowance for a student to miss. Just use this measure for seniors with tardy’s and periods missed and nothing changes.
In conclusion, seniors should be allowed an open campus because they are older and more mature than the students of younger grades. They can be trusted more which should allow for more freedom in some sort of way, and that way should be an open campus. By allowing an open campus students are given freedom and responsibility as of that in the real world, which is definitely a good thing.