Starting this week in Houston ISD, Madison High School students are forced to leave their phones at home or they must turn in their phones at the front office before class. The constant fights at their school caused the principal to ban cell phones during the school day. The controversial policy then led to dozens of students protesting against the policy on Monday with signs demanding that issues happen inside schools and that students need their cell phones. 

The new cell phone ban policy at Madison High School causes more problems than solutions.

Emergencies are rare but there is always a risk of them occurring. Students need their cell phones to be informed of news happening at home and outside of school in general. One student was stuck at school all day while her mother had suffered a heart attack, and she never knew until school was over. Not being able to know about family issues during the school day can result in students being even more heartbroken since the news was so postponed. All schools, including Madison, should refrain from forcing students to turn in their phones throughout the day.

In most schools, phones are restricted in class but students are still allowed to carry their phones no matter what. The constant fights shouldn’t affect a student’s privilege to have a phone on them. Just because a few students want to have it on video to be cool, schools should focus on these individuals and have an alternate punishment for them. Grouping all students to be “the problem” shouldn’t exist in public schools since some students tend to ruin it all for everyone. Instead of banning all phones during school hours, Madison staff should just punish those who keep showing up at fights and punish them independently.

Safety is in the hands of the school whenever students are in the building. Phones provide an extra layer of protection to students since communication with their parents is easily accessible. Now, Madison High School stripped that communication bond between students away and now risking their learning environment entirely. Students now don’t feel as safe at school as they used to be, and the whole situation is causing students to lose focus at school based on the fact that they do not know what happening around them while trapped at school.

Madison High School staff might say that this will lower the fighting rates in school since they think students wanting to record them is the issue. But with a large school with hundreds of students staff, they won’t be able to make sure that every student doesn’t have their phone which wouldn’t stop fighting from occurring. 

As a result, students had a huge walkout and began protesting against the ban. To make a difference, students should all protest against this as a way to protect themselves and bring back a safer learning environment.