Cell phone policy has been a hotly debated topic within our school for quite some time now. Recently, an incident has added to the controversy of what to do with phones that get confiscated during the school day.

Teachers are required to confiscate the students’ cell phones if they see them being used during class time, and turn them over to school security personnel. After their phones have been confiscated, the students have the option of asking a parent to retrieve the phone, or waiting until after school Friday to pick it up themselves.

Sometimes, however, the handoff from teacher to security staff member is not fully completed. This happened recently when a new cell phone randomly went missing from a teacher’s desk.

“[When a phone is stolen,] we look for it,  and if it isn’t found, I report it to risk management,” said Safety & Security Specialist Mike Ukele.

A teacher had confiscated senior David Thompson’s iPhone 4G because he was texting in class. But the phone disappeared before the teacher could turn it into the proper office.

No one was more surprised about what happened than Thompson, who tried to pick up his phone the same day it was confiscated.

“I came in with my mom to get it back right after school,” said Thompson. “First I went to Mr. Ukele and he said that [the teacher] had not turned it in yet. Then we went back to the classroom and [the teacher] wasted no time telling me that someone had taken it from his desk.”

Teachers have worried before about the school’s cell phone policy since they don’t want to be responsible for losing students’ valuable possessions. Once a teacher has taken the phone, the school is responsible for its safe-keeping, so any incidents that occur are the responsibility of the school as well.

“[To prevent anything from happening,] the teachers call the security office or the main office and someone usually comes to bring it down to the office,” said Ukele.

After it became clear that Thompson’s phone had been stolen, his teacher offered a $50 reward for its safe return, and promised that no questions would be asked. But after almost three weeks with no leads, the administration realized that the phone wasn’t going to be returned, and that some sort of action needed to be taken.

“We took almost 800 phones last year and out of those maybe five were misplaced; probably two or three,” said Ukele.

Although the cell phone issue is one that occurs, often, it doesn’t have to. If students avoided texting during class, then their phones would remain safely in their hands and situations such as this could be entirely avoided.  For some, however, the initial rule-breaking does not have very bad consequences; Thompson was reimbursed and is now the proud owner of a new iPhone 4G, which retails for around $600, depending on the memory.

Thompson, though, wasn’t as concerned about the stolen phone as he was about the inconvenience of the situation that resulted.

“I was more upset at the fact that I didn’t have a phone for [almost] three weeks,” said Thompson.