NY students and parents want cell phone ban lifted

By Christine Kearney

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York may be a city of incessant
cell phone talkers, but students vowed on Wednesday they would
hit the “off” button during classes as they battled a ban on
cell phones in schools.

Speaking at a city council hearing where lawmakers
introduced a bill aimed at overriding a ban on cell phones
enforced under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, high school students
and their parents spoke out against the unusually stringent
anti-cell phone policy.

“I feel mature enough to be able to turn off my cell phone
in class,” said LaGuardia high school student Jenna Gogan, 16.
“This is about students’ safety, because, especially in New
York City, many parents need to feel reassured they can contact
their kids going to and from school.”

Dissent over the ban in New York escalated recently when
Bloomberg introduced metal scanners and random checks at some
of the city’s 1,408 public high schools. The new scanners used
to protect the city’s 1.1 million students had led to the
confiscation of more than 3,000 cell phones and 36 weapons,
mostly knives and razor blades.

Detroit and Philadelphia also bar cell phones from schools
while Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago and Las Vegas allow them in
the schools but prohibit their use during classes.

During the hearing, Bloomberg’s representatives said the
policy dated back to a 1988 ban on pagers and was needed to
prevent students from using phones to send and receive text
messages, taking photographs, surfing the Web and playing video
games.

“Cell phones, with their multiple capabilities, are not
just phones,” deputy mayor Dennis Walcott told the hearing.
“Students have used cell phones to summon friends for fights,
to cheat on exams and to take illicit photographs.”

But city council members said crime and disruptive behavior
would occur regardless of the ban and any new law passed would
allow students only to use phones before or after school and
not during class.

“Kids pass notes back and forth but that doesn’t mean we
take away pens,” said council member Belinda Katz.

Carmen Colon, a mother of three, said her kids needed
phones so she could “juggle their lives” and keep track of
them.

“This is a big city, it’s tough and a whole lot of things
go on,” said her son Andre Green, 13. Asked if he had heard
phones ring during class, he answered: “Yes, but sometimes it’s
just their mother calling.”