To start, this petition is intended with no disrespect towards the school of North Royalton High School or any of its officials/members/administrators:

This is not meant to encourage:
1. Disobeying staff members and/or their decisions
2. Disrespecting the school and/or its decisions

This was made for the students to voice their opinions against the decisions that have been recently been made.

Recently, some drastic actions have been taken to reduce negative occurrences in the school. Drugs have been more noticeable lately, even with a rumor of a heroin needle being found in one of the bathrooms. Students have been wandering around the building, even leading to students skipping classes. The concern for these issues is completely understandable, considering that, the school does not want the students doing drugs, and students wandering around the halls deprives the school of its uniformity.

But, were the recently made decisions necessarily the best for the students and the school?
Frankly, no.

Considering the students' feelings on this, many students are annoyed with the rules implemented and feel that greater decisions would have been made. 

Before getting into the nitty-gritty of alternative situations, it would be best to explore the concept that arrives with these recent decisions: collective blame (otherwise known as collective guilt/responsibility).

Collective Blame refers to the idea of shaming/punishing all the individuals in a group for actions taken by a single/few member(s) in said group.

Vaping has become extremely popular with adolescents recently, causing them to use them all the time, even in school bathrooms. It's become a large problem and it's not uncommon at all to walk into the bathroom and see one or two people blowing clouds.

Now, it is safe to say that majority of students do not own/bring e-cigarettes into the school, regardless of what they do during their personal life. Going off of this, was it the right thing to do to shut down a few bathrooms? 
It would be hard to agree with this when it is brought into light how addictive vapes are and how difficult it is to quit once hooked on the nicotine.

Teens are becoming addicted to vaping, and instead of receiving education or support, they are being suspended from school or subjected to other disciplinary actions. Chances are, after their suspension, they are going to return to school, and continue to vape on-premises. 

The American Lung Association has formulated the program called INDEPTH, the Intervention for Nicotine Dependence: Education, Prevention, Tobacco and Health. It's a great alternative to suspending or punishing students for vaping and has been incorporated into many schools. At the end of the program, 84% of students were willing to try to quit the use of nicotine/vaping/tobacco products.

Despite this, closing school bathrooms are just going to suppress the urges of students who vape and make them want to vape more, moving into currently opened bathrooms. Will we eventually have to close every bathroom in the school?
Hopefully not.

Now, moving to the topic of rearranging study halls and implementing assigned seats.

We as students understand that during the current phases of COVID it must be extremely difficult to manage over 1,000 students. We do not wish as a collected group to take the blame for certain students who have made poor decisions. 

The school has recently changed study hall schedules and assigned seats during study halls in spite of students wandering the school which is causing them to take long periods of time away from class, even skipping classes.

Again, we as students believe that this is not the best decision that could have been made and that there are more suitable solutions.

Prior to this year, during Hybrid learning, students had a lot of trouble meeting up and staying in touch with their friends, causing some ties to be cut and losing the strength of certain friendships.

This year has been a big stepping stone to rebuild those friendships, more importantly forming many new ones. A lot of this happened during those breaks in our days, the study halls when we were able to harmlessly choose where we sat during the break/study time and lightly converse. Of course, it eventually went out of hand and went to the point where assigned seats were distributed and periods were changed.
Yet again, respectfully, we believe that better decisions could have been made. Instead of collectively punishing all of the students, assigning seats, and changing study hall locations; it could be implemented to firm the strictness of the monitors to keep the noise down to allow other students to study. Instead of putting out empty threats to give detentions and other punishments to noisy students, those actions should be taken to calm down the study halls, regardless of whether the students like it or not.

In short, we as students hope that these actions could be considered, toward a better good for the school.