The E-HallPass is the most recent third-party software Lake Braddock Secondary School has chosen to use in classrooms.

Parents and students share well-founded concerns about this software, and how the school plans to implement it. Not only does it infringe on students’ right to privacy, it is an ineffective tool for both students and teachers. 

In terms of privacy rights, students’ trips to the restroom are not the school’s business. Claims by administration have been made that the platform will “keep students where they are supposed to be”, but, in reality, it will do no more to help than the color-coded physical bathroom passes. Instead, this will place a time restriction on students that creates an unnecessary pressure when doing something is private as using the bathroom. There are many circumstances in which a student may take more time than this. The issue is, we should not need to get into the details of how certain illnesses, menstrual cycles, or students with anxiety who need a break will effect their time in the bathroom. It is simply not the school’s business, nor the E-HallPass’ company.  

In addition to privacy concerns, the application of the system will cause unnecessary and irritating interruption during lessons. Many teachers, especially in higher grade levels with more mature students, will typically allow their students to take a pass and use the restroom or get water without asking to avoid this. If the point of the application is to ensure students are staying in class to learn, why make teacher stop their instruction to approve a pass for a single student when it interrupts the entire class? 

The school is attempting to track the entirety of the student body in order to regulate a select few— with an ineffective and concerning application. This petition implores Lake Braddocks administration to acknowledge and act upon the overwhelming distaste for the E-HallPass policy. If we are a “bruin nation”, our leadership should reflect it.