Brennan Suen, Staff Writer

Photo by Syd Hayman

It’s five minutes before lunch is over – time to plug your ears and “walk and talk.” Unless you eat your lunch in an undesignated lunch area, the security guards have probably blown whistles at you almost every day of your high school life.

When measured with a sound decibel meter, the security guards’ whistles reach up to 110 decibels, and at that level, it takes less than two minutes of exposure to permanently damage your hearing, according to dangerousdecibels.org.  In fact, it takes a decibel level of only 85 to start damaging your hearing.

That means that this attempt to get students to class on time could cause permanent ear damage.

Vice principal Jay Pickering believes that the whistles are necessary to keep students on time.

“I think that when you have 1200 students at lunch, it is the only way to remind them to get to class,” Pickering said. “It’s pretty effective. We already have a tardy problem getting kids to class. If anybody has a better idea, I would love to hear it.”

But sophomore Evan Jackson feels that the security guards’ whistling is unfair.

“It hurts my ears,” Evan said. “I don’t like it. They don’t even wait for you to walk past them. You couldn’t do it back to them.”

Junior Ivory Wade doesn’t think that whistles are the right solution.

“There could be a better way,” Ivory said. “They whistle right in your face unnecessarily. Sometimes I think they just do it to be mean.”

The security guards’ whistles make sophomore Stephanie Holiman feel like an inmate.

“If you close your eyes in the cafeteria and just listen to the whistles, it sounds like we’re in a prison,” Stephanie said. “I haven’t heard of any other schools that blow whistles at their students.”

As a new student, junior Jennifer Cason was shocked on her first day of school when the security guards blew whistles at her.

“I had no idea what was going on,” Jennifer said. “I thought maybe something bad was happening or that there was an emergency. I never would have expected that at a school. It’s rude, degrading, loud, and it makes you really angry when they get in your face.”

Sophomore Jacob Rose feels less than human when he’s whistled at.

“It’s disrespectful,” Jacob said. “We’re not animals.”

After four years of experience with the whistling, senior Laura Ann Emerson is tired of it.

“It makes me feel like livestock,” Laura Ann said. “It’s loud, annoying and damaging to my eardrum. It’s completely unnecessary and degrading. I’d like to blow a whistle right back in their faces.”

Senior Nicole Sanders shares Laura Ann’s sentiment.

“It makes us seem like animals,” Nicole said. “It’s like we’re untamed and need taming. It hurts our hearing and only destroys order; no one listens to it. We know it’s time to go, and we don’t need whistles.”

Security guard Harry Coleman, however, believes that blowing whistles is necessary.

“[I do it so] kids will know that it’s time to move and go to class,” he said. “I don’t blow the whistles very loud, but some [security guards] do. Sometimes kids yell ‘stop blowing those whistles,’ but it helps keep order. Without them, there would be mass confusion and kids wouldn’t listen to us.”