Jacqueline Lutz
Editor
Alexandria City High School has recently implemented “hall sweeps” in order to encourage students to be on time for class. Students who are caught in the hallway without a pass are “swept,” and are directed towards a designated room where they are given a tardy slip. The hall sweeps have caused controversy among students and teachers and definitely has its faults.
While students used to speed-walk through the hallways, even running into each other and pushing past other students in order to get to class, there has now been an increase in slow-walking, where students compete to see who can walk the slowest to class in order to be swept.
“When I don’t want to go to a class, I just walk slowly to it and end up getting hall swept. That way, I miss like 30 minutes of the class just because of the process of getting swept,” said senior Layzie Laite.
Students have also begun to collect the blue slips of paper they receive when they are hall swept. A competition has been created on social media to see who gets the most slips in a week.
Additionally, teachers have been affected by hall sweeps.
“One time, I went out to make copies for the class and left the students in the classroom for a few minutes. When I came back after the hallsweeps started, there were ten extra kids in the class trying to avoid being swept!” said history teacher Halle Sweipt.
Some teachers have also been hall swept themselves.
“I was walking in the hallways during one of my planning periods and ended up getting mistaken for a student and got told to go to the designated place for swept people. I honestly took that as a compliment,” said math teacher Addi Tione.
The hall sweeps continue, but students’ ability to finesse the system seems to persist.
