Tardy sweeps reduce the amount of students in the hall.

During the first week of tardy sweeps — February 4 to February 11 — secruity collected and consequenced 70 to 100 students a day.  The most recent tardy sweep resulted in 30-50 students consequenced — half the initial number.  So yes, tardy sweeps do significantly work.  

During the 2021-2022 COVID year of Morton East there have been a lot of challenges for both student and staff dealing with each other after a long break from the COVID pandemic. A lot of things have changed since then, both good and bad. For example, something that has changed is that a lot of Morton students wander the halls and enter school/class several minutes late. It got to a point where deans and staff wanted to put an end to it. To solve this issue they created “Tardy sweeps.” Tardy sweeps are an action where staff like security or deans scan any student ID if they are walking in the halls without a pass or are late to class. Once they scan your ID you have automatic detention the next day. A lot of students who attend Morton East High School feel a strongly about this situation. Some think it is absurd and unnecessary, others think it is completely fine. After we surveyed students and interviewed several of them about the issue, 68 out of 100 disagreed and believe tardy sweeps are not going to help. Here are what some students had to say. 

“It’s stupid like detention for 1 hour? I feel like they have gotten stricter like the old times. No one wants to stay an hour. I feel that now that people realize it’s an hour, they must get to it, you know, get to class on time,” sophomore Ruby Navarate said.  

Ruby thinks people are going to start heading to class on time because of this new tardy sweep and mentions old Morton referring to how strict they used to be. But is it really working? 

“It has been working.  There’s too many incompletes;  just get to class. I feel like (students) have never had any bad consequences for being tardy, so now it is working. It’s always the same people in the halls too,” security Aveny said.  

We now know that they are working. We also know that there are students who are repeatedly late. Although some of those students say the tardy sweep will not stop them from getting to class whenever they want.  

“No absolutely not, I’m still late and it’s not going to help at all because they cannot give everyone a detention,” senior Diego Andrade said.  

Diego says that he will still be late, and that this new sweep will not stop him. Other students say that it will, and that they have stopped showing up late.  

“The number of students in the halls will decrease because of the consequences, because of that now I don’t come late to class,” student Juan Rodriguez said.  

Juan started taking this a little more serious, coming to class on time shows that this new sweep is in fact making students rethink arriving late to class.  

“It’s fair for the school to do it. I mean we do have to be on time, so I don’t blame them. But I don’t like the whole detention thing after being tardy 5 times, like come on te pasas what if I was going through a life crisis and that’s why I arrived late to school, and Deans still want to be like “you got detention after school,’” said Natalie Delgado.  

 Tardy sweeps could be too much for students, some students are already going through so much at home that this could be their last straw. Other students believe families could get involved.  

 “Yo entiendo que es nesesario para las classes pero para lonche no hace sentido y pienzo que los estudiantes le van a decir a sus papas y sus papas se van a quejar con la escuela,” senior Esmeralda Diaz  

 Esmeralda thinks this could possibly interfere with students and family and their families could get mad about it. We know the tardy sweeps are working now, but we don’t know how it would help in the future.  

 “I don’t think it will decrease the number of students in the hall, maybe for a short period of time but everyone will probably go back to not caring at all,” said sophomore Gianna Hernandez.  

Gianna could be right or wrong.