As the 2018-2019 school year started, a new punishment has been introduced to the students in DGS by the administration and deans. This punishment is known as social probation, which is when a student who has violated school policies is banned from any school events that take place outside of the 8:00-3:20 school day. For example, if a student got into a fight, they would be banned from school dances, football games, basketball games, etc.

The administration and deans noticed that misbehaviors have increased in the past year. During the second half of the last school year, they held a basic trial period of socially prohibiting students to see how the number of school policy violations will be affected. The number of expected student behaviors increased, which helped the administration officially decide on making social probation a consequence within the Community District 99 High Schools, starting the 2018-2019 school year.

The new punishment of social probation was made with the hope to continue the decreased rates of students violating school policies. Deb Michael, who has been a dean at DGS for 15 years, shared the main reason as to why the decision of implementing social probation was made.

“….The misbehaviors have been increasing… [in a parent meeting with Principal Schwartz] we [got] the support from parents that ‘absolutely kids who are coming to these events should be kids who behave [and] who are doing well you know you should get rewarded for that,’ so our building Principal [Schwartz], as well as the administration, said ‘let’s talk with our sister school, Downers North [DGN], and let’s decide if this is something that we want to start doing more heavily starting on this year,’” Michael said.

The four deans decided to ask students of the graduating class of 2018 about their opinion of handling student violations.

“…We had talked to previous seniors about what if we said to you, ‘you have a fight you can’t do anything you’ll be socially [prohibited]; you’ll be on social probation until, you know, the semester,’ students would tell us ‘well then I would never misbehave because I want to do those fun things; I want to go to the dances; I want to go to the football games, basketball games,’” Michael said.

Many students of DGS believe that the new punishment of social probation is effective in correcting student behavior, and will continue to be effective in the coming school years. Sophomore Aidan Krieble is a dean aide and he shared his opinion on the new punishment.

“I feel like that’s a pretty good punishment; I feel like it’s going to make people care about if they don’t show up to school on time because I feel like it’s a harsher punishment than like a detention or what they had in place,” Krieble said.

On the flip side, there are students that do not favor social probation as an official school punishment. Lena Turek, a junior at DGS, shared that she doesn’t believe that social probation is effective and that students will go along with the terms of being socially prohibited.

“I personally don’t really think that social probation is that effective because there are not many school events that are that annoying to miss. I feel like students would keep doing the certain thing outside of school or the activity when on social probation,” Turek said.

“Of course not being able to go to homecoming and prom are not good, but things like football games, aren’t that big of a deal. If you are on social probation, you can still do some of the things you got in trouble for, like vaping just outside of the school activity, without that big of a threat of getting in trouble again,” Turek said.

Social probation technically expires at the end of the semester unless there were any new violations from students that are already being punished. The deans meet in the last week of the first semester to go over each student’s record.

“…During that week [December 21st] we look at everybody on social probation, if their attendance has improved and their behaviors improved, we now remove the social probation and we give them a clean slate for second semester, but if second semester they start off the with an issue or before first semester ends if they have another major violation we are going to extend the probation to the end of the school year,” Michael said.