Upon the return to school after more than a year, many Bowie High School students became upset after seeing their campus surrounded by steel gates, allowing them to come in and leave before and after school only.

Ariadna Gaona, 11th, is a transfer from last year; this is her first year face-to-face at Bowie, so I wanted to see how she felt about the change at her new school.

Gaona makes it clear that she does not agree to having a closed campus for the simple reason that when students get here even one minute late, they have a tough time trying to get inside which causes them to lose class time.  

One of the ideas student council members had in mind was to only allow seniors to leave campus for lunch. Gaona says this is not a fair idea to the underclassmen because they are stuck with lunch food that few find appealing.  

“There are sometimes where I can’t eat, and I have to wait till I get home because the lines for lunch are extremely long, or they only give you certain options that most times I don’t like,” Gaona exclaimed.   

Karen Romero, 12th, has been here all throughout her high school career, and says she disagrees with the new change. 

“My freshmen and sophomore years were different; we were allowed to leave campus for lunch but now that things have changed, (it) makes me sad that this was done my senior year, after my junior year being taken away.”   

Although Romero is a senior, she does not agree with only allowing seniors to leave campus. “Some of my friends are juniors and sophomores, and I’m sure there are other seniors who have other friends like that too, so only allowing seniors to leave campus isn’t the best idea, it is unfair.”  

Romero believes the new rule could be a result of an ongoing problem on campus: attendance. 

“I think one of the problems that caused campus to close was the attendance, but not everyone had bad attendance and I think it is unfair that for a few bad people we all have to take consequences,” she said.  

Campus administrators declined to comment on the matter. Students are hoping to reach a compromise so that everyone is happy. “We should try to make a deal with administration in a peaceful way,” Romero suggests.