(Photo: Patterson Press)

by Asende Baele

At Patterson High School there are students who skip class and they keep walking in the hall. We don’t know why they do that because we know everyone should follow school rules but there are some students that can’t respect that we are coming to school to learn, not to walk in the hall.

Patterson High School has rules. If they call a hall sweep announcement for all teachers to close the door, they do that because they want to see all students in class.

We asked some students questions about why students walk the halls. One of the students, John Dingzon, explained, “I think they are lazy, stressed, and overwhelmed.”

We needed to find out more information about hall walkers at Patterson, so we talked to Mr. Alukwu, the assistant principal who leads the hall sweeps. Mr Alukwu explained, ”We cannot stop every single hall walker, but what we do is we call a hall sweep. If we see any students in the hall and if we already called a hall sweep, we should be taking the students to the cafeteria. If I catch one of them, what I do is I will call a parent and I will show them the attendance to see how he skips class and he keep walking the halls.”

In my opinion, Mr. Alukwu is one of the best principals at Patterson High School. He works really hard to help students. He wants them to respect school rules and to get their education. That’s why he tries to tell them we need all students at Patterson High School to follow school rules and to focus in class, not to walk the halls, because if we keep walking the halls, we can’t focus what we need to learn in class.