With the new cell-phone policy at school and in the state, we’ve had some extra time to ponder life’s biggest questions (instead of doomscrolling). But first, we wanted to ask some questions we had about the ban …
1. The Nature of Reality
Imagine an apple. Hold it in your hand. Imagine the smooth surface of the spherical, bright red apple. How does it smell? How does it taste? Now try imagining the apple without seeing it. How about without feeling it as well?
Now take away all five senses — you can’t interact with this apple at all. Is it still there? According to philosophical idealists, if no one is around when a tree falls in a forest, then it doesn’t make a sound.
Similarly, if a student uses their phones in class without the teacher knowing, then does that mean it never happened at all for the teacher and thus there is no need for them to confiscate the student’s phone?
2. The Eighth Amendment
If two students have equal ownership over one phone, and one of them violates the policy, how does the school plan to deal with the other innocent student’s equal claim to ownership over the phone, with hindsight that the Eighth Amendment guarantees “freedom from excessive bail, fines and cruel punishments?”
3. The Bat-Signal
Can students carry around projectors to communicate with each other using the Batman’s bat signals? These small and well-engineered projectors not only help us students, but also showcase innovation and creativity. Dire situations call for dire measures and this is a perfect distress signal, is it not?
4. Neuralink
Are we allowed to use Neuralink cybernetic brain implant chips to control our devices, which are stored safely in the phone caddy, from our desks?
5. Ecolocation
Are we allowed to develop a biological sonar, otherwise known as echolocation to communicate, given the phone restrictions and the occasional desperate situation in which we must talk to our fellow peers during important class lessons?
6. “From Bell to Bell, No Cell”
The cell-phone policy’s catchphrase “From bell to bell, no cell” sounds simple enough — but what exactly does it mean? Does the “bell to bell” mean from the end of one class to the start of the next? Or does it stretch from the last bell of one day all the way to the first bell of the next morning. If so, is checking your phone while at home now an infraction? The ambiguity suggests we may be living in a 24/7 phone-less dystopia.
7. Paradox of the Heap
Where does a cell phone end and a tablet begin? As foldable phones get larger and tablets shrink in size, the line between the two blurs. If a tablet is off-limits, what about laptops — devices that can make calls, send texts and stream Instagram reels and TikToks with equal efficiency?
8. The Ever-Moving Campus
Where really is Saratoga High School? The Earth is spinning, orbiting the sun at about 67,000 miles per hour while our solar system itself moves through the galaxy at roughly 828,000 miles per hour. On top of that, the universe is expanding at somewhere between 45 and 73 miles per second. If “on campus” is supposed to be a fixed location, then technically none of us are ever in the same place twice. So when a student checks their phone during class, are they actually doing it “on campus” or somewhere deep in the emptiness of the universe?
If only we had some sort of handheld device to easily search up the answers to these questions …
