Yutan went through some new changes recently, but by far the most controversial is whether or not students should be able to carry backpacks.

The administration made the decision that students are no longer allowed to take their backpacks to class and have to leave them in their lockers.

Although the decision was made with the students’ best interests in mind, this new policy combined with our shortened passing periods this year has resulted in many tardies.

“At the beginning of the year, we had our passing periods cut down and so that added stress to people. Once we heard about leaving our backpacks in the lockers, it caused even more stress and more tardies,” said a senior.

 Now that we can no longer carry backpacks around, we have to stop at our lockers in between classes, which results in us being late.

“I had never received a tardy in the four years I have gone here, not one time, but having to stop at my locker and walk all the way across the school has greatly increased my chances of being late,” said another senior.

It’s also hard to always know what we need for class before class even starts. This creates a problem because students frequently need to go to their lockers to grab supplies.

When kids have to leave class to go and grab things, it takes up not only their time but also their teacher’s time.

One student said, “I forget a lot of stuff now. I’m not going to gain as many extra credit points in Mrs. Eikmeier’s class because I keep using class passes to grab stuff that I forgot.”

It’s a hard situation because taking backpacks away is for the students’ good but is also a huge inconvenience for many of them. 

“I don’t know what the better solution would be because it’s such a hard situation for the administrators that this is all they could really do, but I don’t think it really is helping any,” said another senior.

I, however, think that if we had four-minute passing periods again to give us adequate time to get our stuff that the students would be much happier. This gives us enough time to get out stuff and get to class so it’s a solution for everyone.