I enter my class as the last bell is still ringing. Without making eye contact with me, my teacher barks at me to go to the tardy table. I feel the beading eyes of my classmates staring me down as I leave the classroom. I stomp out of the room, and my anger for being sent out is what fuels me to run fast to claim my tardy pass.

Furiously, I charge back into class. I missed 6 more minutes of class to retrieve my pass than I did actually being late.

With pass in hand and everyone’s eyes on me, I take my seat. The room is dead silent, except for my heavy breathing. I ran for dear life retrieving my pass to avoid getting in further trouble.

The next day the cycle continues, but with someone new. Day after day, my classmates feel the same anger I felt, missing class to retrieve their passes.

Olathe North has a tardy table problem, and will continue to get worse unless there are solutions posed.

“I understand why teachers want kids in class on time. That I don’t mind. It does bother me, though, when a teacher decides that correcting and disciplining me is more important than actually being in their class” junior Jack Wilson said.

Many students believe that it isn’t the punishment that teachers enjoy, but rather the authority they get to hold over us students with the tardy tables

“I was literally present in the classroom as the last bell rang but I was still considered tardy. At the beginning of the school year, I even told my teacher it was a challenge making it to their room given the destination of my prior class. Clearly, teachers don’t care, so why should I?” Junior Zayda Carrell said.

Teachers plus tardy tables equal a miserable mix for our students, and what makes difficulties worse is most teachers don’t grant mercy to those whose classes are on opposite sides of the building.

Junior Sri Chalasani agrees with Carrell. “There’s no reason to send someone to a tardy table if they have an actual reason to be late, or if they are walking into the room as the bell rings because sometimes people have to walk all the way across the school and when the halls get crowded it gets hard to move fast” said Chalasani.

As most students are understandably upset with the lack of sympathy our teachers have, what solution does this problem pose? Do we extend the passing period, or do we take the loss and move on? What do we do?

With a school as big as Olathe North, there is no practicality in having only one tardy table located in the middle of the school. It would greatly benefit many students by having more accessible tardy tables throughout the school for those whose classes are far from the one tardy table we have.

The proposal is that Olathe North should either extend the passing period or offer more accessible tardy tables to those who have classes a fair distance away from the original tardy table in the center of the school.

By extending the passing period, it would offer sympathy to those whose classes are a fair distance apart, helping relieve the amount of stress that comes with the fear of not making it to class on time. It would be greatly appreciated by many students if they no longer had to fear the possibility of getting chewed out by teachers, possibly resulting in a tardy pass.

With as much stress as school brings for students, the last thing we need to deal with is a slip of paper that teachers like to throw out like confetti.