Well, well, well. You’re sitting in class after the teacher has finished the lecture and you have 30 minutes of free time. You want to use your hard earned free time scrolling through social media or looking at funny photos your friends took, but alas, you have no cellular reception. Sadly, for an Academic Magnet High School student, this is a daily occurrence.There are many needs of a cellular device that exceed the desire to communicate on a mere social basis, such as communicating with parents, teachers, club organizations and sports coaches regarding important matters within a timely fashion. An inability to access, no matter the cause, can be challenging and frustrating to deal with as a young adult with lots going on. Identifying and creating solutions to this apparent issue should be addressed and talked about more between the student government and its faculty members. 

When brainstorming topics for this new issue of the Talon, I looked towards the AMHS official and student council Instagram pages for inspiration on topics regarding student life. However, I was unable to even open Instagram. This came as a major shock to me as we have newspaper production in Mrs. Lankford’s classroom, a room that has typically had great reception. However, in recent weeks I have been unable to remain confident that my phone will work in her classroom. This concern led me to this topic as it is a major factor on students at Academic Magnet High School.

The grave severity of the issue is most correctly shown through the sheer number of responses that I got to the survey. The google form had over 85 responses, almost tripling the highest number of responses I have ever received. When it comes to phones, students are passionate. While the data was hard to put in a graph, I matched the results with my own personal opinionregarding the cellular reception around campus. 

Using a simple google form, I asked students to list the three classrooms that they felt had the worst cellular reception within the school. In addition, I asked what cellular provider they used to see if the reception varied among the differing providers.The students had similar responses despite the numerous providers. The data showed a heavy prevalence among classrooms within the math hallway. This one area of school accounted for 34% of the votes for worst cellular reception. Combined, the math hallway recorded over 88 votes for their bad cellular reception.I  believe that this truth was of no surprise to any that have attempted to use their cellular device at our school. Now among the classrooms of the math hallway, there were two in particular that had exceedingly high responses from the students who filled out the survey, Mrs. Frazier’s room and Mrs. Renes’ room. This came at no shock to myself as I had Mrs. Renes for Algebra 2 sophomore year and I currently have Mrs. Frazier for calculus. It is significantly worse in Mrs. Frazier’s room as it received double the votes received by Mrs. Renes’ room. I can personally attest to the horrific cellular reception in Mrs. Frazier’s room as my phone is frequently left showing SOS, no service, as I attempt to open snapchat messages from friends. This is particularly frustrating after we have finished an assessment and we lack further work to occupy our minds while we patiently wait for our classmates to finish. 

So here are the results:

(I am aware that the total number of votes does not add up to the 255 responses that it should, given I required three classrooms per response. If a class room was mentioned once, I did not add it to the data table for it was insignificant.

And of course I have had a large majority of these teachers all throughout my 4 years at Academic Magnet. This has been something that has  irritated me. However, until I had the platform to share my frustration on the situation, I had never truly thought to inquire if there was anything possible to remedy the situation. This thought really should have come to me sooner as I was a student that suffered from this more frequently than others given the data collected. I only experienced cellular reception worse than that found in Mr. Jent’s classroom, in the towering mountains of Zion National Park. 

Solution: I am unaware of how feasible this would be, but in my five minutes of research, I discovered that you can improve cellular reception in immediate areas through signal boosters. Once, again, I am unsure of how much a quality signal booster would cost, if it would truly work, and if the school would even be allowed to have them in the classroom. However, this piece was not meant to find or be the solution to the issue. My only true intention was to get the conversion started on a more wide basis, allowing for a movement to begin: “Free the Phone” 

Hopefully, some of the current underclassmen will be able to reap some benefit from the trailblazing all you readers have witnessed here today. 

*I would like to note that the content of this article is not meant to encourage phone usage during instructional time, or time meant to be used for school work. This is purely directed towards phone usage during free time, such as lunch, study and free class periods. Sorry teachers.*