WHS Cracks Down on Perceived Tardiness Epidemic

With the new tardy policy at WHS, certain students are feeling a lot of pressure to hurry to class each morning.

The newly updated WHS student handbook states, “If a student is more than 5 minutes late to class, they are considered skipping class and will be assigned an appropriate consequence.” The appropriate consequence includes the possibilities of Saturday school, after-school detention and further penalizations if the behavior continues.

Associate Principal Andrew Bratcher says the updated policy stems from a disregard for showing up to class.

“We had certain groups of students intentionally cutting class on a regular basis,” Bratcher said.

Zach Dreher (11) believes this new policy could have unintended consequences for people not deliberately skipping classes.

“I think that the administration needs to rethink how they deal with people skipping because this policy could end up punishing the people who are good students and who are not trying to skip class. Being late happens every once in a while,” he said.

Additionally, Dreher believes the administration’s concept of skipping class is flawed, saying, “I think that skipping is missing the whole class, not just the first five minutes.”

Principal Tyler Keener emphasizes this addition to policy is not to be unforgiving, but is simply to make the punishment stiffer for cutting class, so students will be discouraged from purposely skipping. “I think the students who want to be in class won’t be greatly affected by this, if at all. This is a way of ensuring kids aren’t just wandering the halls when they’re supposed to be in class,” Keener said.

Whether or not the new policy change is effective, it prompts the question of how to separate the students who are purposely skipping from those who are unintentionally late for class.