Under a new policy for leaving campus during lunch, seniors will no longer use traditional paper lunch passes starting Oct. 12 in response to an influx of students caught with fake lunch passes.
Over the past two weeks, security caught seven juniors and three seniors with falsified lunch passes. As a result, seniors will now have to use their senior ID to exit campus. This new policy aims to make it more difficult for underclassmen and juniors to go out during lunch periods against school rules.
“The reason we have lunch passes is because we have to get the parents’ permission for them to go out, and we’ve always just associated the two,” principal Alan Goodwin said. “But we can still get parental permission and just keep a file and not give out a pass. We know that people can make fake IDs, but that will be less common.”
If the new policy is not sufficient, seniors may become additional eyes for security.
“Seniors will have to tell when they see underclassmen and juniors off campus,” Goodwin said. “I don’t like to put seniors in that position. We just need to tighten it up so people aren’t using these forged IDs.”
Students caught with the fake passes receive two days of lunch detention. If students are caught a second time, they will most likely receive a longer lunch detention, security team leader Cherisse Milliner said. Furthermore, seniors who take underclassmen out will lose their parking privileges.
Security identified the forged passes primarily because of the writing.
“They didn’t have my handwriting,” Milliner said. “Each student’s name on the pass should have my handwriting.”
They were also often the wrong color, size or material. Fake lunch passes are a bigger problem this year than they have been in previous years, Milliner said.
Despite the clear call from the student body to allow underclassmen to leave campus during lunch, the administration does not plan on changing the policy.
“There just isn’t time and space,” Goodwin said. “We can’t provide enough parking spaces for kids and it’s hard enough getting our seniors back on campus in time. It’s a senior privilege.”

http://www.theblackandwhite.net/2015/10/04/lunch-id-policy-changed-due-to-fake-passes/