Glen Rock High School students are enraged about how abruptly the music doors were shut down. The halls became chaotic with the mixture of the 7 grades coming in from one entrance. The energy is completely different between the two schools.

The music doors were a middle school and high school entrance but primarily high school as it led straight to the D hallway for the high school. However with them now closed, high school students who come from Thurston or Belmont have to enter through the auditorium doors which is a primarily middle school entrance. Trying to navigate through that in the morning makes you feel like you are stuck in standstill traffic. The middle schoolers travel in bunches which can get really frustrating for the high school students.

Out of the 114 students surveyed, 59 percent said they used to enter through the music doors. Students have called the closing an inconvenient nuisance. Especially in the rain, which is when the lawn most students cut across becomes extremely muddy. Even the students in the band who have instruments would access the music hallway through these doors to put their instruments away in the morning. That extra go-around is unnecessary and could be easily avoided.   

The doors were closed on the premises for safety and the time management of students. Head of Security, Director Rob McCorry states, “Dr. Parent and I had discussed utilizing the main entrance of the Middle School as it was intended to be, the sole access point for Middle School students. Similar to the Hamilton Lobby entrance of the High School, students would arrive at one central location in the morning. This would provide better security of students and time management for arrivals.” Closing the music doors provides the idea that the Hamilton Circle is a High School entrance and the auditorium is a middle school entrance. Not every student has that extra time in the morning to walk around the whole school. Its not always a student’s fault for being late. Students were slipping in after the bell and not getting a late slip.  Dr. Parent and Director McCorry were hoping that the closing of the doors would prompt students to arrive earlier but having to walk that extra few feet has not made a difference. 

 Principal Dr. Michael Parent states “due to our inability to appropriately monitor the entrance with staff I decided to close the entrance.  Without an administrator being able to monitor the entrance, it was a liability.  We can appropriately monitor the Hamilton lobby, Athletic lobby, and Auditorium lobby entrances.” Now, this is understandable but I’m sure there are other solutions. We could put a student monitor and give them service hours. We could put a kiosk there for the late passes. The security guards could automatically lock the music doors at 7:50. 

The closing of the doors also feels like the beginning of merging the two schools. By shutting down the doors, the goal was to separate the entrances between the high school and the middle school. It achieved the complete opposite by pushing the two schools closer together. This feels entrapping for high school students as the maturity level between the two schools are just different. A student who filled out the survey stated “The high school and middle school are being grouped together by the administration more and more each day, and it’s awful. High school is a step up that comes with privileges, when you group middle and high schoolers together, you get 7 grades full of immature children.” When comparing a 12th grader and 6th grader, there are obvious differences in the capabilities of the two.  The administration should stop trying to force a merge that benefits no one.