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Needed: Babysitter for a High School Student's Cell Phone
By
Jen Chung
Published May 21, 2006
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
Jen Chung
Published May 21, 2006
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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With the Department of Education forcing students to give up their cell phones (which makes the students and especially their parents crazy), it seems that kids have been working out ways to keep their cell phones close by during the school day. And Gothamist wants to give them an "A" for ingenuity, as they are resorting to hiding them in trash cans, paying $1 for bodega owners to watch 'em, and even putting them in the gutter for safekeeping! The Daily News speaks to students at Grady High School in Brighton Beach, who say "mostly eveybody" is hiding their cellphones near school, from gutters to apartment building laundry rooms, even window ledges, so they don't have to wait at school to pick them up if they've been confiscated. The Department of Ed's "no cell phones in school" policy has been enforced more strictly with the introduction of scanners that rotate from school to school (the guards confiscate the cell phones, which used to fly by under more of a "don't ask, don't tell" era). One Brighton Beach resident says he's even seen kids picking up their phones from his backyard! It's like the best Easter Egg hunt ever! One bodega stopped babysitting the phones for $1 a pop, since the kids were dropping off all their electronic gadgets since it was a huge pain in the neck.
The Daily News also has a point-counterpoint on the issue: Yes for cellphones, no for cellphones in schools. Now, Gothamist has been pretty down on the kids' crazy need to have cell phones - we did without 'em, why do they need them - but we admit that we have no idea what it's like to have a teenaged child in the NYC school system (as someone emailed us to tell us we were very misguided). However, we do remember what it was like to be a teenager and there's very little impulse control at that age; conversely, would Veronica Mars have been able to solve as many mysteries without her trusty Sidekick?
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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