Ding Ding Ding… The bell goes off…

As students rush out of their monotonous classes, they look forward to roaming the halls and going wherever they would like to get work done, but this freedom is in the past; the new Spartan Time has turned into a harsher version of last year’s. Students are now required to sign up ahead of time to go to their desired locations or to get their work done.

Spartan Time was originally known as the students’ “recess” where they could go wherever desired. Students could either hang out at the cafeteria or finish some homework due the next day, but with this abundance of freedom came a lot of responsibility, and students began to abuse it. The administration had to take action to fix this problem for the well-being of the students, teachers, and the school as a whole.

“In years past, Spartan Time became a bit of a free-for-all. Administrators and WS felt it was a good thing that students should be able to decide where to go, but kids have used this free time in the wrong way,” said freshman administrator Becky Brandt.

This year Spartan Time is significantly different. For starters, teachers need to sign students’ planners to give permission to attend their class. Then students are required to report to their advisory and need that pass to leave. This fixes the problem that teachers used to have where they had too many students in their class at once. It also eliminates needless time wasting.

“[The new system] is much more organized than our past ideas for Spartan time,” said Brandt. While the administration believes that these changes are an upgrade, many teachers think that it is an inconvenience.

It has also gotten some complaints from the students of WS. Many students feel that this new system detracts from the original goal of Spartan Time: giving students time to get work done and improve their grades.

“I normally change my mind last minute and go to 5 different classes a Spartan Time, but with this new Spartan Time I won’t get as much work done and it will prevent me from getting better grades,” said junior Jillian Gross.

While administration acknowledges that the new system will take some getting used to, they strongly feel that the new system will prevail in the long run.

“It’s a little bit of hurdle, but the whole idea is that we have to balance the freedom with the responsibility to keep students safe and to get students to where they need to be. We had to get back to the foundation of what Spartan time is really about: getting work done,” said Brandt.

Not all students, however, feel negatively about the new Spartan Time schedule.

“[The new Spartan Time is] very organized; you know where you’re going to go and how long you have to work,” said freshman Mark Zachar.

Although the reaction to the new Spartan Time hasn’t been completely positive, everyone can agree on one thing: Spartan Time is a time that should be used by students to get work done.

“The main mission of Spartan Time is to complete work, and that’s what we, the administration, tried to achieve with this new version of Spartan Time, get back to the main mission,” said Brandt.