Have you been experiencing annoyance, forgetfulness, and worst of all…detentions? Well then you may be suffering from ID overload. There is a simple prescription for this epidemic and it involves students bringing their IDs to school. However, the administration may have gone overboard with the amount of identification needed throughout the hallways of RB. Don’t get me wrong, RB is a great learning institution and provides a fantastic environment for academic enrichment, but are we really going to prevent students from participating in school events or accessing departments or other information that are available to students here?

Let’s take a step back and think about this one. I understand that this is a safety issue that we’re dealing with here, but overkill might be the best phrase to use in this situation. Last week when seniors were allowed to vote for the preliminary homecoming court at lunch, students were turned away when they failed to provide identification to the teachers and students operating the table. All students are now required to show their IDs to have access to the school library. Random ID checks have been administered at lunch a few times each week since school started. Not to mention we no longer have access to the computer labs and must show our IDs to eat lunch on the lawn.

Personally, I have never carried around my ID for the four years I’ve attended RB and it rarely gave me problems throughout the first three years of my high school career. However, the stricter policy that has been put in place has restricted a lot of the things I used to do. As a kid who brings his lunch to school every day, I have never needed my ID to buy lunch, so for the kids that are on that meal plan it would be second nature for them to have their IDs on their person. But that is only a portion of the student population here, and if it weren’t for the lunch system that requires students’ IDs, things would be even harder to control.

The administration is doing this for safety purposes because they are trying to prevent any nonstudents from having access to our school or to be able to reprimand unruly students that they cannot identify, but I think most of the students here can be trusted or identified enough so that we don’t have any significant problems. IDs or no IDs, we are still going to have vandalism take place in the library, computer labs and any other place students have access to. From my experiences the last three years, I have not noticed a legitimate need for this new limitation of student rights, sans IDs.

So if you’re ailing from this horrible disease, the best thing I can prescribe would be to remember to bring your ID. But, if you’re like me the fever isn’t going to subside anytime soon.