On Tuesday, Nov. 27, an announcement was made to the students of Dow High concerning the tardy policy. Assistant Principal Ted Davis outlined that students will be seeing some new methods in an effort to reduce the number of tardies, specifically hallway sweeps to collect students who are not in class on time. These sweeps involved administrators walking the halls between bells and handing out closed lunches for any student not in their classroom on time. The hallway sweeps occurred on Thursday, Nov. 28.

“Administratively, we are trying make sure students get to class on time and don’t disrupt the educational process of others by walking in late and disturbing the class and teacher,” Davis said.

If a student is caught in the hallway without a pass during the sweeps, they will be given a lunch detention for that day if they are caught between the first and third periods. If caught during the fourth and seventh periods, the student is given a lunch detention for the next day.

Upon the policy’s newfound enforcement, students had mixed reviews.

“It’s good to punish the kids that are always late,” junior Mackenzie Wetekamp said. “It’s excessive for the kids that try to get to class on time and are occasionally a little tardy,”

On the first day of the enforcement and the ‘sweep’, the administration caught multiple students, who were each given lunch detentions for that day.

One of these students, senior Andy Lundahl, found himself with a detention on the first day of the policy.

“I was like walking into the room when the bell rang and I got sent to the cafeteria for being late,” Lundahl said. “It’s a little excessive; you should be five or more minutes late.”

Although to some students, the rule may seem too much, surrounding schools follow similar policies. DHS has a detention on the fourth tardy but nearby schools such as MHS and BCHS take the same consequence at the third tardy.

“It will probably die down after a while because a lot of kids are probably not going to change their ways,” Wetekamp said.

The current tardiness policy, as stated in the student handbook, describes tardiness as a ‘failure to be in the assigned classroom when the bell rings.’ The punishment for the first three tardies per semester is dealt with by the classroom teacher, however, beyond three, the student would be referred to Student Services for additional discipline. From there, if the student failed to serve a detention or a disciplinary consequence, it was viewed as open defiance and they would be suspended from school for up to the three days.