The new e-hall passes in the Shawnee Mission School District have sparked a change for students. Associate Principal Ben Richardson said the district was introduced to these e-passes and evaluated the effects on the district’s middle schools before moving them to high schools. 

“My opinion is that, like all technology that we have, it can be a good thing, as long as we use it responsibly, and if we use it, all together correctly,” Richardson said. “So I do like that now students can write their own pass to be approved by teachers. I also like that it can keep track of the timing and just help keep students accountable for going to and from their locations. Like a sense of efficiency. I mean, just the paper, if you think about all the paper that we’ve used over the years, we’re saving all that paper.”

These e-passes have been working as intended but there are some issues that aren’t solvable. A recent example would be the district-wide internet outage. With the bad, there is some good to these e-passes. Librarian Julie Fales has seen fewer people wandering the halls since e-passes were implemented.

“I think that’s just the nature of the beast with having the internet and all these devices and people just have to get used to dealing with that,” Fales said. “You can always write a paper pass if it’s an emergency, you know.”

Coming from middle school, freshmen and sophomores said there are more restrictions compared to passes in high school.

“I feel that it, in a way, makes things easier, and it does, like, save paper and stuff, but they can honestly just be really frustrating, since it’s usually impossible to get into the bathroom if it was available,” sophomore Jack Cook said.