Belvidere High School has been having problems with student behavior in the bathrooms and hallways this year. School administrators decided to have one bathroom for each gender throughout the entire day. Along with that, hall sweeps are being conducted.

These behavioral issues aren’t new at BHS; the school has been having problems with the bathrooms since September. Students started following the “devious lick” trend, causing the school administrators to have assemblies and announcements about the behavior. Not long after, students began to get their act together, but it wouldn’t last for long.

Shortly after winter break, students went back to old ways causing the school administrators to move forward with their plan to give out consequences. It got to the point where one of the toilet seats in the girls’ bathroom was broken in half. After that day, administrators finally decided to follow through with the consequence of only having one bathroom, but it only struck another problem.

 Students started skipping class or showing up to class without a pass. Of course, things like that happen but it was too often to let it slide. So again the school administrators gave off warnings but this time it didn’t work. It only got worse, not even the hall monitors could control the number of students not in class. Since it was becoming a bigger problem, administrators spent no time giving another rule, hall sweeps.

According to Mrs. Eklund, the Dean of Students, behavior referrals are being reduced due to the bathrooms being monitored and checked frequently by hall monitors. 

“Overall there has been a decrease in hall sweeps,” Eklund said. “There was a little bit of a jump when we came back from break.”

Eklund talked about how student behavior has changed. Students who are late to almost every class are beginning to get passes to class or just being on time. She also talked about how there are fewer distractions in class due to people arriving on time.

The first of the hall sweeps had a big change in students’ attendance in class. On the first day of doing hall sweeps for two periods, there were 79. By the end of the week when they did sweeps for two periods they had 46. On the first day of doing hall sweeps for three periods, there were 147. By the end of the week, there were 67

 “Students are more serious about getting to class on time and having the appropriate passes when in the hallway,” Eklund said.