Natalie Heckert

Senior Braley Howey uses the new E-Hallpass system to go to the office during a class period.

E-Hallpasses are really convenient! Until the WiFi goes out, or there’s a class with no service, or Clever shuts down, or there’s a few too many people out in the halls already. Frankly, there are a lot of issues that are proposed with the new pass system.
First of all, the WiFi at Hayes is hit or miss. The network for school-issued devices, Student_Pacernet, can be very slow in some classrooms, depending on where they are in the building, and will just completely cut out often.
The BYOD WiFi for students with their own devices also stays on brand with the bad WiFi theme. Student_BYOD isn’t user friendly, whether it’s the inevitable issues with logging in or the WiFi itself not working properly.
No matter the issue, the inexcusably common WiFi problems create some annoying obstacles for students when making their own passes online.
To add to the hurdles, Clever, the application students use to get to E-Hallpass, habitually doesn’t work, whether it’s login issues or the whole site shutting down. When Clever doesn’t work, everyone is left without access to hall passes, causing teachers to go back to the old school method of using paper passes.
On top of Clever not working sometimes, it’s inconvenient for students to get on their phones. Students have to go through the DCS website, then log in to Clever and finally open E-Hallpass and create their pass, all on the school’s sketchy BYOD WiFi or slow phone service.
So while the passes are more convenient to teachers, as all they need to do is press a button, students are having to waste their precious class time just trying to make a pass. All of this is ironic because last year Hayes administration emphasized the importance of limited phone use in class.
After going through all of the trouble of making a pass, students can finally go where they need to. That is, unless they want to go to the restroom and there’s already four people in there. This feature was implemented to stop loitering, but all it’s doing is preventing people who actually need to go to the restroom from going.
The uprise of teenage vaping lures many students into the restroom during class time. At any given moment a student can walk into the restroom and smell the fruity scent of someone’s vape in another stall. While E-Hallpass has a timer to help crack down on loiterers, the school’s administration doesn’t take advantage of the feature, leaving students to not care about how long they’re out.
The timer on the system is useless. Ideally, it’s supposed to be used to flag students’ passes if they take too long, but it doesn’t seem like administration is taking any further action. This keeps the bathrooms plagued with a long line of people waiting to go.
Along with that, teachers often forget to end students’ passes, running the student’s time up and making it impossible for administrators to know if the student was actually out for that long.
There’s always the question of why students don’t go before class; there are no passes involved and no limits on the amount of people allowed in the restrooms. It’s the perfect solution, right? However, the restrooms are so crowded during every passing period, no matter how quickly a student can get there. If a student waits through the inevitably long line, they are almost guaranteed to be late to class, giving them a tardy, and soon after, a detention.
There’s no way to make these E-Hallpasses work the way Hayes administration wants them to. There are too many deep-rooted flaws that prevent the online system from flowing perfectly, whether it’s the school’s internet issues, unruly teenagers or general operational issues. E-Hallpass has the potential to do good, but it is more of a burden than it needs to be.