You’re sitting in your study and you have no idea what your homework is for tonight. The library’s full, and they do not give out 15-minute passes anymore. All you want to do is whip out your cellphone so you can visit FontanaLand or Edmodo.com or whatever web site your particular teacher posts his or her homework assignments on; but wait… you can’t, because LHS still enforces a no cell phone policy in classrooms and this policy also applies to tablets and other electronic devices.

More and more teachers require that assignments be turned in using Google docs, Edmodo, or other web pages. But the school does not allow carte blanche access to the internet. We should be able to “bring your own device” to DLTs in order to access teacher’s websites and assignments.

Teachers such as Michelle Fontana and Jessica Olmo do not give students print-out syllabi or write assignments on the board. They tell us everyday to make sure we check their webpage various times because it is always changing.

Teachers like Charles Cangemi, Hollington Lee, and Christopher Rea are hardcore Edmodo users, according to their students, and all of them love it. This site is used like a Facebook for students and teachers to comment, chat, and overall communicate about anything inside their classroom. Wouldn’t it be nice if students could access this site in their DLT instead of sitting there for 47 minutes doing nothing.

I know I do not want to sit in a study and do nothing for 47 minutes. My time as a senior is valuable, and our homework load is large. I want to take advantage of every second I can get, that is why I took a study. If I knew I would sitting there half the time unable to access my assignments, I would have been better off taking another class. I look around all of my studies to see kids sleeping on their desks or gathered in groups talking. Internet access would allow some of these students to access their assignments.

So this poses a major question to administration, would you rather have most of the student body sitting in studies doing nothing? Or, would you rather allow them to access their phones so they can actually get work done?

Many teachers often tell seniors that they are trying to get us ready for college. Well, if they are really trying to prepare us, then we should be able to access our smart phones, iPods, or tablets. In college, the professors do not sit there and monitor everyone on their devices. Professors embrace the web, they want students to be able to use every resource they can get, and LHS really should want the same.

Some teachers are already on board for allowing us to use our cell phones. They have requested a wireless router and distributed permission slips. DLT teachers have not bothered to do this. I propose that if a student brings in one permission slip, he or she should be able to access the Wi-Fi wherever it is available. In fact, in this day and age, the entire school should be wireless. How come practically every McDonald’s in the country has Wi-Fi, but our high school does not?

The cell phone policy worked 10 years ago. But times have changed. LHS desperately needs to update its rules to today’s needs of the students.