Recently the confiscation of iPods has increased in the school. School administratiors have announced that they will start going into classrooms to check to see if students are listening to their iPods in the learning environment. Not only does this result in confiscation of the iPod but also an office referral for the student who has the device out.
     The real question is why, why is this necessary? If a student has an iPod in class, it should be the teacher’s decision as to whether to take it away, or just look the other way. For the administration to come into  the teacher’s jurisdiction of conduct and enforce rules is undermining the teacher.
     Is the administration  fearful of students cheating by using their iPods to record answers? That would take way too much effort for a student; he/she might as well take out a textbook. It is a little more compact, but really, to go through the effort of writing all the answers to a test or vocabulary definitions would take longer than it would for the student to just study for the test. Students could simply put all their answers on their calculators and cheat.
     Another reason why the administration wants to get iPods confiscated from students is because they don’t want students distracted when they should be paying attention. But in reality, it is hard for a teacher not to realize that a student has headphones in their ears.
     But the iPod policy is just one of the many policies that have become more strict. To prevent kids from using the computer lab or Information Center computers to play games, the school has decided to block most of the websites for games. During class is one thing, but during lunches, that is unneeded. There are plenty of work stations for students to quickly check Teacherweb to do the homework that they did not do.  
     One of the newer and stricter policies is not being allowed to have food in class. Now, only water bottles are allowed in class. That means not only no other drinks, but also all food is prohibited from everywhere but the cafeteria. Obviously, a case can be made for forbidding food in the classrooms, but a case can be made for the opposite as well.     
     But there is one new administrative action that I find absolutely unacceptable. At home basketball games, an administrator sits in the middle of the student section to control how wild students get. Part of the motivation of players is to hear their fellow students cheer them on in wild ways.  At college basketball games, the student section is absolutely crazy. At a Duke-Carolina game, a man dressed in a Speedo to distract a Carolina player shooting free throws. After the game, this player actually said this ritual caused him to miss both free throws. Going too far? Perhaps. But nothing Hawks’ fans have done approach that.
     If students are so distracted in school, why do we have such strong test scores and are one of the very few national Blue Ribbon schools? Without out all these  new   conduct   policies   and regulations,  we made River Hill the prestigious high school it is. So why has the administration punished the River Hill student body? Perhaps, instead, a reward for hard work and excellence is in order.