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Yesterday when I arrived at Beacon there was a large crowd outside of the school. One of the teachers was warning kids that the Department of Education had “randomly” chosen Beacon to set up metal detectors at. We had to put all of the electronics that we had in our backpacks and wait on line for about 15 minutes outside in the below-freezing weather.

One of the policemen outside (there were 5 police vans outside the school!) told us to put all of our “Cell phones, iPods, Xboxes, PS1s, PS2s, PS3s, PS4s, if they’ve even come out yet” in our backpacks. Yeah, because people really bring entire video game consoles to school.

Once we got in we had to put our backpacks through the security conveyor belt thingy. My backpack just barely fit. Kudos to Mr. Moscow for the dozens of history packets. Then we had to walk through the metal detector walk-through thingy, just like in airports. You know, in case someone willingly took a weapon to high school when there were metal detectors set up at the entrance. Anyone who had one would have just run away. Besides, metal detectors don’t detect drugs…

They actually didn’t take cell phones or iPods. If they had, well - that would have been a bigger deal. I just happen to be writing an essay on this for community service, and it’s a very good move on their part not to take them. It caused enough of an uproar at the middle schools when they did it - but if they took them at high schools they would officially be dead stupid.

So, instead of being 2 minutes late to Spanish I was 15 minutes late, and I wasn’t screamed at. It didn’t disrupt the day that much, except that people were between 5 and 30 minutes late to class. But still, I doubt they caught anything. Anyone with anything would have just turned around when they saw the line outside the school and gone home. Kids just don’t care enough to risk it. So, in the end it was pretty pointless.

The Department of Education has to change their policy on cell phones. Maybe this is the first step in their realization of their stupidity. I’ll post my full essay here once I finish it.