New Attendance Policy:
Automated System to Crackdown on Latecomers

By Liz Grau '99
For those of you who wander into advisory or assembly after 8:10 every morning this is a wake-up call. Form heads and teachers are tired of students arriving after 8:10 but before morning meetings are finished so that they are not marked late. This year the policy has changed: If students do not walk into assembly, advisory, and form meeting by 8:10 ON THE DOT, they will be sent up to Mr. Garvan's office to sign a yellow lateness card. In addition, the punishment for frequent latenesses will be strictly enforced: after five latenesses each term students will have after school recycling duty which they must serve within the week of their offending late arrival. According to Garvan "Opening meetings are important because they provide a sense of community". This is one of the reasons for the stricter rules regarding latenesses. Students who do not "show up and do the job everyday" should not be allowed to slack off on their responsibilities to the school.

To help really crackdown on late arrivals, Mr. Garvan, along with the deans and form heads, are considering automated attendance machines. The new system would require students to check in before 8:10 each morning by swiping their matric card through the machine in either their form head's room or Mr. Garvans office. If students do not check in by 8:10 when the machines automatically shut off, they will be recorded absent until they fill out a yellow card. Mr. Garvan and his committee are still weighing the advantages and disadvantages of this new system. While it offers a foolproof method of attendance, numerous problems could arise: Students could forget their matric card, or sign in before 8:10 and skip morning meetings.. or swipe other student's cards for them. So far the solutions for these obstacles are a box of matric cards in each form head's office so that students would not have to search for their matric card; morning meetings missed will be regarded as cuts and offenders punished accordingly; and for those students who dishonestly swipe a friend's card for them, they will receive immediate expulsion from school.

Still, Mr. Garvan isn't sure what he will do to prevent the inevitable line that will form around 8:10 in each form head's room as students battle to check in before the machines turn off.