While his friends stash their cell phones in their backpacks, Chad Townes keeps his in his pocket. It’s not supposed to be there, so he keeps it turned off.
But once in a while, he hides in the bathroom to use it furtively.
“I ordered food once,” said Townes, an 18-year-old senior at Evanston Township High School.
ETHS students are not allowed to bring cell phones to school. Students who use them on campus face disciplinary action, including confiscation of the phone. But this may change next year: Evanston Township District 202 School Board is considering a new proposal to allow students to bring cell phones to school.
“The proposal is that kids can carry them in school,” said Margaret Lurie, school board vice president. “They can use the phones outside of the school and that wouldn’t be a violation of the rules.”
But according to the new proposal, which will be discussed on May 13, using cell phones within the school still will be prohibited, Lurie said.
The school board has yet to discuss what disciplinary measures it will adopt against students who use phones in the school.
While Illinois state law prohibits students from possessing cell phones in school, the District 202 school board is taking advantage of a loophole which allows individual school boards to decide if students should be allowed to bring them, she said.
Some students say the rule isn’t being enforced strictly.
“Once, a phone rang during class, but the teacher just told the student to put it away,” said 17-year-old ETHS senior Brittany Thomas.
So many students have cell phones that teachers can’t catch them all, Thomas said.
And the school board is aware that many students have been breaking the rule, Lurie said.
District 202 is one of many school districts across the country to reexamine its cell phone policy.
Despite a California law that prohibits students from carrying cell phones in schools, Henry M. Gunn Senior High School in Palo Alto, Calif., has allowed students to bring cell phones to school with written permission from parents since 2001, said Noreen Likins, assistant principal at Gunn High. California recently repealed this ban.
“The realities of the world have changed,” Likins said.
The ubiquity of cell phones means that they are no longer associated with drug dealing or other illegal activities, Likins said.
“That’s no longer the case now,” Likins said. “Everyone carries a cell phone.”
Lurie said it is “unusual” for a teenager who can afford a cell phone not to have one.
“We’re just trying to get in step with what’s happening in the world today, ” Lurie said. “I don’t anticipate any problems with passing the proposal. But what the discipline (for students who use phones in school) will be, that might get a little hairy.”
