Parents and Students Fight for their Rights

At a city council hearing where layers introduced a bill about banning on cell phones in NY schools, enforced by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, high school students and their parents spoke out in anger and made quite a scene becausee of the anti-cell phone policy. Angry over the ban in New York escalated recently when Bloomberg introduced metal scanners and random checks at some of the city’s 1,408 public high schools. The new scanners had led to the confiscation of more than 3,000 cell phones and 36 weapons, mostly knives and razor blades. During the hearing, Bloomberg’s representatives said "the policy dated back to a 1988 ban" on pagers and that it is needed in order to prevent students from text messaging each other, taking photographs, surfing the Web and playing video games. They insist that cell phones are a distraction and are used to cheat, take inappropriate photos in bathrooms and organize gang rendezvous. Parents have already written angry letters, e-mails and faxes, staged rallies and news conferences and even threatened to sue claiming they need to stay in touch with their children in case of another crisis like September 11. One of the council members was also quoted saying “Kids pass notes back and forth but that doesn’t mean we take away pens.”To date, teenagers have proved to be very creative in their attempt to work their way around the cell phone bans in their schools. One popular example includes hiding the phones in a sandwich roll (yummy) or leaving phones at nearby stores which charge small holding fees."

http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.com