Wheat Ridge High School’s administration has implemented a new policy to increase attendance in class: tardy sweeps. 

Introduced on January 10 at the all-school assembly, principal Lisa Mahannah explained how the school administration and security would sweep the hallways after the second bell each class period, which marked the start of class, and give out detentions to any student in the hallway. 

But how effective will this new policy be? 

The most tardies occur in the first period, as people get to school, and the fifth period, as upperclassmen and friends return from off-campus lunches. 

However, from 8:05-8:20 AM the main parking lot turns into a real-life horror movie. And it’s not just the parking lot that’s affected but also the stretch of 32nd Aves from Wadsworth to Kipling. 

Traffic gets backed up to the point where seniors, among other students, struggle to get to their parking spaces, tensions rise, and it’s overall just not a great place to start your day.

And this new tardy policy doesn’t help that morning stress. 

An anonymous senior stated how they would, “rather not go to class at all than be a few minutes late and get a detention.” 

Which seems to be a very common opinion among a large number of students we talked to. 

However, we have yet to see how serious these tardy sweeps will be. Four days into the new policy, and students are getting less anxious by the day.

Similar to the cell phone policy that started strong at the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year, the seriousness of it has dwindled.