In a majority of high school movies and TV shows, detention is normal. Most people think of it as hours sitting in a classroom while being administered by a school official, but why is this not prevalent in MVHS?

Senior Christine Chan is against the integration of this activity because she believes that the environment of MVHS pushes us to not have a detention or more harsher disciplinary actions.

“[MVHS] students have too much homework on their hands and don’t even have time for detention,” Chan said.

According to executive assistant Diana Goularte, students who go against ethics of MVHS can be disciplined in alternative ways. Because of the small quantity of student cases that comes up each day, detention would be insignificant and sometimes even inefficient because of the higher time commitment.

“We deal with students’ actions on a case-by-case basis,” Goularte said. “Some examples might involve helping our custodial staff member Tom Orsua with picking up garbage or having a ‘lunch detention’ at the office”.

Each case received by the office is worked out by an administrative staff member, the student and their parents. Even though Saturday school is an option in our district, the types of punishments given to MVHS students are different from this.

Although MVHS does not have a formal detention during school times, students believe that a detention is not even necessary on our campus and that there are better alternatives to this harsh action. Senior Meghal Gupta has had experience with the administrative power of punishing students by way of phone confiscations and believes that more intense punishments are unnecessary for lighter mistakes.

“Usually, the teacher has given [my phone] back at the end of class, but once it’s been given to the office,” Gupta said. “I feel that it’s fair after multiple violations, but detention is unreasonable.”