STUDENT DEFENDS BLANKET USE

Written by Emilie Ker

Blankets are a hot commodity around the school. Girls and even guys use them during the school day because the temperature in the school is often equivalent to a meat locker. So yeah, I need blankets.

 It is insensitive for teachers to ban blankets from their classroom. Every classroom is a different temperature at different times of the day. In World History, it’s as if I am in the Bahamas, but in Chemistry I seem to have traveled all the way to Antarctica. I need to be prepared for any temperature situation when I come into school. Students are constantly complaining about how cold the school is. I think it’s time we do something about it, and that is letting the student body use blankets at our leisure. I’m trying not to offend anyone by using a blanket; I’m just trying to keep warm.

Teachers aren’t concerned about the temperatures outside of their classrooms. That may not sound like a huge issue, but it is. It’s an issue for the students considering we are warm-blooded and need our blankets because they allow us to to stay warm in in these freezing classrooms. Plus, blankets are fun. People bring blankets to school so they can show off their individual style and they keep them warm.

Blankets are fun, and keep us warm, what could get better than that? With the temperatures this cold in the school, blankets are a necessity.

TEACHER BANS BLANKETS IN CLASSROOM

Written by  John Minnick

Once a month, I meet friends on Sunday night at the Zona Rosa Buffalo Wild Wings to play trivia. My friends, who are all well over 21 years old, like to sit in the bar section because there are fewer screaming babies and ill-mannered children. This side can be quite chilly, and I froze one Sunday sitting under an air-conditioning vent. The next month I came prepared. However, I left my Nebraska Cornhuskers fleece blanket at home and wore my Staley Falcons hoodie inside, even though it was 95 degrees outside. I knew to dress appropriately for the inside, not the temperature outside.

The same common sense should apply for all of us at school.

Classrooms at Staley vary widely in temperature. Some rooms are meat lockers; others are saunas. I’m lucky. Sides of beef are right at home in my classroom, and I like it that way. I tell students on the first day that it tends to be cool in my room, and they should plan on wearing a hoodie or a sweater to be comfortable. Early this year, some students came to class swaddled in fleece blankets. In response, I declared my classroom a “no-blanket zone.”

I did this for three reasons. Blankets are a health concern. They’re dragged on the floor and taken into the restrooms. Who knows where else these blankets have been? I wouldn’t want to sit at a desk where the student in the previous class bundled himself or herself in a blanket that hadn’t seen the inside of a Maytag washer for months.

Another reason is you’re in high school, not preschool. Toddlers can get away with wrapping themselves up in “bwankies” because it’s cute. Young adults wearing them look silly. It’s hard to take you seriously.

Finally, no one at the law firms downtown or on the Plaza cocoon themselves in blankets at their desks. None of the nurses or doctors at North Kansas City Hospital check on patients that way. Workers on the assembly line at Ford and General Motors don’t. Why? They’re not appropriate for the workplace.

Life is all about trade-offs. One trade-off we all make is dressing appropriately for the circumstances or conditions in which we find ourselves. Wrapping yourself up in a blanket is fine for home, but it’s not OK for school.