Arkansas Governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, recently offered schools money to remove phone use under the guise of supporting mental health. Fayetteville High and the Fayetteville school district agreed to it and now are in the process of removing phones and using “Yondr Pouches”, a device that magnetically locks a phone until opened using a magnetic key— Making it extremely difficult to open.

The first conversation that every student brings up is “what happens when there’s a shooting?” Our generation has grown up with the awareness that at any moment a gun can be pulled out and used against us. Last year, Fayetteville High School reported guns on campus and a bomb threat making it clear that a shooting is a genuine concern that shouldn’t be brushed off by the school board. The use of phones during shootings has saved lives and helped law enforcement locate the active shooter much quicker. Multiple students calling police while in a shooting can help locate where the attacker is in the building and find students still stuck inside the school. Along with that many students will want to contact family in the case that it is their final moments.

Even without the issues of shootings there’s other emergencies that students would urgently need to access their phones, such as health problems, mental and physical. The use of phones by the youth won’t decline only because they’re being removed from schools, nor will this decrease forms of cyber bullying as it will still occur in the home. Removing phones can increase anxiety in students without being able to contact their family, being unable to access grounding materials, or contact mental health professionals. Students in abus ive environments in their home life can often find school is the only safe time to reach out to those who can help, without phones they lose an important device that can be potentially life saving. Phones are an important tool in school that can be used for educational purposes or when students forget to bring lunches, Chromebooks, or other important items used in school there’s an easy path to get those items.

Phones can act as a distraction in class but it should always be up to the discretion of the teachers, who understand how phones will affect their lessons as it is the teachers who understand how to function in their classrooms. If Yondr pouches come they lose their choice in the matter. The truth is the administrators who are making these rules aren’t in the classrooms as often as students and teachers and so they don’t understand how we function in the classroom. Phones grant access to all of human knowledge, to music, to culture, to family. The loss of phones, especially in free times like lunch or passing periods, can help students understand and function in an ever growing world. Signing this petition helps students have hope that we can feel a little safer in our classes in a time of high stress and new beginnings.