During the month of February, administration at Eleanor Roosevelt High School implemented a hall sweep policy that enforced having a hall sweep every period.

    The point of a hall sweep is to get students out of the hallways and into their assigned class on time. According to administration, there would be a hall sweep every period besides homeroom for the whole month of February due to “excessive tardiness among students.” Now, hall sweeps are done randomly to “surprise” students.
Administrator, Ms. Thomas said, “The goal is to basically have it so there are significantly fewer students in the hallways after the bell rings than there were before.”

Most students feel that the newly enforced hall sweep policy is not very useful, “If we are going to have a hall sweep every period, kids are just going to get to class on time [while they are happening] and go back to being late[when they are not],” said junior Ashley Labonte. “Doing them all the time won’t do anything but make people get to class for the time being,” stated Senior Taylor Van Allen. “They do [hall sweeps] too often. It makes it hard to get things done that you can’t do during class,” said sophomore Daniel Townson.  

Some students think that hall sweeps are being used due to a lack of adequate enforcement of hall passes. Junior David House said, “If they enforced hall passes better, then they wouldn’t have to have these hall sweeps all of the time.”

Punishment is strict for students caught in hall sweeps. Students that are caught in one hall sweep are just given a warning. For the second offense, they are issued trash duty for a week. If a student is caught in a hall sweep three or more times, they are dealt with by case and are given either more days of trash duty or at-home or in-school suspension. “I can’t believe they are giving such serious consequences for just being late to class,” said freshman Joshua Brown, after being caught in his first hall sweep.

Administration claims that if they obtain their goal of having little to no more students wandering in the hallways after the bell, the hall sweep procedure may be extended.