Does that title ring a bell? Teachers often use that phrase (The bell doesn’t dismiss you, I do.) or any other version of it to keep you after class for a moment. But little do they know... it’s illegal. 

The definition of captive is ‘a person being held against their will’. Holding someone captive (otherwise known as kidnapping) is illegal. 

After the school bell rings, we are dismissed and supposed to move onto another class. Those 4 minutes between classes are for us to use the restroom, make small talk, etc. But if the teachers are holding us back from our next class, we don’t have that full 4 minute period and we are being HELD from that (hence on the word held). We are otherwise being held against our will. We were rightfully dismissed to move on to another class.

The teachers have a full 45-ish minutes to give us all of the information we need but they use the 4 minute period between classes to tell us the most important things.

To summarize this all up, teachers are holding us captive (kidnapping) us when they don’t let us go exactly when the bell rings or hold us back after class. We need to ensure that they can’t do that and that it doesn’t continue to happen. Thank you for reading this and I hope you consider passing it on!

-Lauren Shrago