I walk to Maury High School every morning and afternoon, from the early hour for 6:40am to about 2:05pm.

I was always told by my mother to take my cell phone to school for safety reasons. She would have me call her when I arrived there to let her know that I had gotten there okay. Back in middle school I thought it was a dumb reason, but as the years went on I figured out why she felt the way she did.

Students with their cell phones outside Maury High.

During my freshman year of high school, cell phones didn’t seem to be such a big issue as it comes out to be now. Even then I would always keep my phone off and in my backpack unless there was an emergency. That next year we slowly started to get a little more strict. Things at Maury were slowly changing. For an example, we have a new principal (Dr. Tottossy) and a new discipline principal (Mr. Mangum). That year we were also experiencing problems with gang fights, guns being brought to the school, etc. That is when they started getting serious and cracked down on us students. We have many new rules which are mandatory to follow, and the ‘no cell phone policy‘ is one of them.

This is something I know the teachers are happy about. A few teachers even thought that teens would use their cell phones in unethical or dangerous ways, like texting test answers to each other and alerting each other about the location of fights occurring or fights about to occur.

According to an article on the Norfolk Public Schools website, Mr. Mangum has been asked by many students, “If people who walk to school have phones in case of an emergency, why can’t they turn them off once they get to school and turn them over to a school official?”  Mr.Mangum replied, “I have no say in the rule for no electronics. Even though there are some positive aspects to the ‘No cell phone’ rule, I can see how students could find some negative aspects.”

Mr. Mangum also said that “the school board has made the rule for no electronics,” as told to The Maury Mix writer Mary West.

Even though I used to think cell phones were  unnecessary in school, now I see it differently. It is, plain and simple, a safety issue.

There is a lot going on in Maury High School. It’s a big school with a lot of students, and sometimes it’s kind of hard to feel safe in a school as such. The brawl at Granby High in October just goes to show that our schools are not the safe haven they used to be.

This issue isn’t just about school rules; it’s about families too. My mother and I are very close, so if something happens and I need to contact her, I need to have my cell phone to let her know what’s going on. I go straight from school to my job, and so I need to bring my cell phone to school. My mom normally wants me to call her right when I get out of school and to also let her know when I get off work so that she can come and get me.

Having my phone on me in school is like a safety blanket in a way. The school board shouldn’t be taking that security away from me.