Op-Ed: The Case Against ID Scanners

Oliver Henry ’26

One of the most fateful moments in recent BHSEC history occurred on an ordinary autumn day in 2023. While leaves fell from the trees and the cacophony of construction continued ceaselessly, students filed into the auditorium to meet their new principal. The memory of Michael Learner’s jovial face still lingered in the minds of many. Yet the students’ hopes for an equally friendly successor were soon shattered. After briefly mentioning his love of spicy foods, Principal Chaterpaul’s face settled into his signature scowl as he began to expound on the “major changes” that his leadership would bring:  less free periods for underclassmen, DOE-managed email addresses, Jupiter grade logging, heavy restrictions on "open rooms”, an obsession with “seat time”, and more. The rest, as they say, is history. The draconian regime lasted for almost a year. Many comparisons to Orwell were made. Eventually, due mostly to PTA drama, Principal Chaterpaul tendered his resignation. 

That was over a year ago.  But  despite all the flak Principal Chaterpaul received, many of his changes have stuck around. One of the most visible  is the presence of ID scanners flanking the main entrance on Mangin Street. They’ve become such a normal part of the morning routine that it’s easy to forget the uproar they caused when they were introduced. Current ninth and tenth graders have never even known a scannerless BHSEC. Were we overreacting? I don’t think so.  In my opinion, the resistance to ID scanners was justified, then and now. The benefits of the scanners do not outweigh the serious drawbacks. Luckily, it’s not too late to reconsider.

To understand the case against ID scanners, we first need to understand the rationale behind them. You might assume that they were implemented for security purposes. That’s certainly a part of it, but not the main reason (we already have dutiful security guards at the entrance). In fact, the ID system is mostly concerned, not with keeping intruders out, but rather with monitoring the people already inside the building. I briefly talked with the current principal about this late last spring. He explained that the scanners are supposed to prevent class-cutting. When I raised the objection that most students didn’t cut class, he acknowledged that the policy was targeted at a small minority of chronically absent students. The computer system can identify if a student swiping out has had their out-to-lunch privileges revoked and refuse to let them leave. 

The intentions here are obviously good, but this approach is ethically questionable. Inconveniencing the entire school population just to police a small subset essentially amounts to collective punishment. There is a substantial amount of scholarly literature on the use of collective punishment in schools – for example, a teacher taking her whole class’s recess because one student misbehaved. It’s a controversial topic: some behavioral scientists say it’s a useful tool, others call it unethical. A 2024 study found that children as young as six consider it to be unfair.  The general scientific consensus – even among those that support its use – is that collective punishment is only of use when the group being punished has had some indirect responsibility in the individual transgression. In simpler terms, if the group allowed the violation being punished to occur – perhaps by fostering an environment in which it was acceptable, or by egging the perpetrator on – it makes sense to punish them as a whole. But if the violation is arbitrary and isolated, then punishing the group for what one individual did is simply cruel. Which one of these cases are we dealing with in the case of IDs? I think it’s the latter. It’s not the student body’s fault that a handful of people don’t go to class. The vast majority of us wouldn’t even consider class-skipping. Do people occasionally show up ten minutes late to PE, or take an extra-long bathroom break during a boring advisory? Sure. But if we’re talking about repeated and intentional non-attendance of academic classes, that’s something the average BHSEC student would never do nor condone. So why punish all of us? 

At this point, perhaps an ID scanner supporter would respond: “the scanners aren’t a form of punishment, you’re just being dramatic.” It is true that the actual inconvenience of the scanners is marginal. Yes, they can make you late for first period, the bottlenecks are irritating, and fumbling for a wallet every time you enter or leave the building isn’t pleasant. On the other hand, this all only costs you, at most, a couple minutes per day. But the ID scanners have more pernicious effects beyond just wasting time, ones that make them a net negative for the school and its community. 

There are psychological costs to constantly swiping in and out. An analogy can be made to the use of metal detectors in public schools. Although implemented as safety measures, studies show that they actually make students feel far less safe, because they now see their environment as one in which metal detectors are necessary. Similarly, might not having ID scanners at the doors create the perception for students that their free movement is restricted, causing them to behave as if they were the type of people who needed to be policed, which then justifies even more disciplinary measures? Because of this self-perpetuating cycle, students arrive at the building each morning thinking “time to clock in” as if they were punch-card workers or even prisoners, and leave with relief once their “shift” is finished. This completely undermines the high-trust atmosphere of mutual respect that the early college system was founded to create. The point, as Bard president Leon Botstein explained in his book Jefferson’s Children: Education and The Promise of American Culture (essentially the founding charter for the BHSEC system), is for schools to be places students want to be. This might sound ridiculously optimistic – very few American teenagers tend to skip to classes with grins on their faces – but, considering students spend almost as many of their waking hours at school as at home, we should at the very least strive for high schools to be, if not outright pleasant, at least not places of dread. One small step towards doing this is removing the ID scanners.