How Gettysburg students feel about new phone policy

GETTYSBURG, S.D. (KELO) — Friends Megan Jager and Braden Bieber, seniors at Gettysburg High School in central South Dakota, can’t use their cell phones in the classroom or hallway. And they don’t mind.

“It doesn’t really bother me, but I think that it’s beneficial for other students ’cause a lot of them, last year they were, like, very distracting,” Bieber said. “I feel like people are getting more homework done because they don’t have their phones.”

“I don’t really mind it. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal,” Jager said. “I’ve never really been on my phone at school.”

“I feel like I’ve gotten a lot more homework done ’cause I don’t have the distraction of looking at my phone,” Bieber said.

“I think that it’s going to be beneficial to other students because I have noticed that, like, some of my classmates, some of the kids in other classes, they do heavily rely on their phones as entertainment and stuff like that,” Jager said.

How Gettysburg’s phones-free policy is going

In a new policy that started with the new school year, Gettysburg middle and high schoolers lock up their cell phones during the school day in pouches. Sixth grader Thomas Williams says it’s a pretty easy system.

“Once you want to unlock it, there’s this round magnet, and you just push a button on it, and then it unlocks your phone,” Williams said.

Now, communication is more, well, old school.

“Kind of renew that old school thing of talking to people,” Jager said.

“I think it’s good that the teachers want us to, like, talk,” eighth grader Quinn Larson said about not having a phone at lunch.

Still, Larson doesn’t think the new policy is perfect.

“Sometimes it’s kind of hard because we have things that we want to use our phone for … I don’t think it’s terrible,” Larson said.

It’s all still fairly new; the policy went into effect on Aug. 21.

“It’s not that bad,” freshman Aiden Larson said. “I was a little, like, skeptical at first.”

“I’m still trying to feel it out,” junior Jaelyn Stanley said. “I mean, not having my phone all day is something new ’cause I always have my phone with me, all the time, no matter what. So, it’s different.”

“It’s more normal,” Aiden Larson said about the new policy having had time to settle in. “Like, I used to check my pocket and look for my phone, and it wouldn’t be there, but that kind of quit happening.”

“I think everyone thought it would be a lot worse than it really is,” senior Jhett Simon said. “When everyone’s got their phones locked up, you’ll see that it’s not really that big of a deal to socialize.”

Phones can become unlocked if it’s for an educational purpose and has a teacher’s support. Otherwise, if a student is in class or the hallway or eating lunch at school, the phone has to be in a lockable pouch. A magnet unlocks the pouch when the student leaves.

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Simon uses open campus for lunch, but even when he can have time with his phone at lunch, he’s not feeling compelled to check it.

“It’s kind of just become a habit just to not really use it, and I feel like everyone’s just not using their phones nearly as much,” Simon said. “I don’t know if that’s just me personally, but I don’t feel that at lunch at all.”

The new policy has his support.

“I think overall it’s been very good for our school,” Simon said.

Gettysburg High School has 70 kids total; the sophomore, junior and senior classes each have 17 students, while the freshman class has 19.