One Way Halls

Photo+courtesy+of+Peyton+Gearty

Photo courtesy of Peyton Gearty

Peyton Gearty

When school began last year, in September 2020, the TRHS Administration established a one-way hallway rule to help ease the flow of traffic and reduce proximity to other students. During this time there were many issues, happening not only in our school but across the country. Distant learning and handling mask procedures were extremely tough for students, but the school felt one-way hallways were an equally important matter. This led to students wearing their masks incorrectly due to the fact that it seemed the administrators were adamant about the arrows on the floor and I saw less people getting told to pull their masks up over their nose due to this. I hope teachers and TRHS Administration can set a good example,as Tim Ferriss said, “What you don’t do determines what you can do.” 

I believe that the one-way hallways are not thought through. Most students followed the rule when it was first initiated but some teachers and administrators ignored it and went against the flow of traffic, setting a poor example for students. It also didn’t help limit how close students were to each other. Students still lined the hallways shoulder to shoulder, instead of being six feet apart or even three feet apart. Moreover, it didn’t make sense logically, the spread of Covid-19 would not stop just because all students are going in the same direction. It just made it more difficult for some students to get to class, some having to go all the way around the school rather than just going down the hallway and ignoring the arrows like the staff was doing.

 Now in the 2021 school year, fewer and fewer people listen to the one-way rule, yet some administrators are still adamant about enforcing it. It seems as though the staff watch more for students not following the arrows than they do mask guidelines. I, personally, was stopped by staff on my way to the lunchroom and turned from the 400s into the 500s. I was forced to go all the way around instead of going just a few more feet and being by the lunchroom while I watched people pass by without masks. It’s silly in my opinion to worry so much about which way we are going rather than what we are doing. 

I think it would be beneficial to make an announcement that the delta variant of Covid 19 isn’t affected as much by the vaccine and that masks are important for our safety as the delta variant is much more lethal than the initial virus. The CDC has said in an article about the delta variant that it is two times more contagious than Covid 19 was original.  I believe that if we got rid of the one way hallway and instead focused primarily on the mask mandate, it would not only help take some things off of the administration’s worries, it would help students feel and be safer. I feel we should go back to how it was before, hallway crowding is still an issue with the one way halls and that way kids can get to their classes much faster instead of having to circle the school, taking three to five minutes to get to class.