Over the course of just two Community Life Gatherings, the Deans’ Office confiscated 94 backpacks not put away in lockers, sparking frustration and debate over the school’s locker policy among students. Backpacks were found in garbage cans, an elevator, behind the concession machine, bushes, teacher’s classrooms, and more. Mr. Ka’ailau Bell, Associate Dean of Students, remarked that “students feel like they’re real clever in how they’re hiding” their backpacks.
During assemblies, Community Life Gatherings, and other such student gatherings, students are required to store their belongings in their lockers. The rationale behind the locker mandate, Bell said, “is that it’s not secure. We’ve had many, many instances of bags going missing. 90% of the bags on campus are black North Face,” so students in the past have accidentally grabbed each other’s bags, not realizing until they got to class. There’s also cases in which students have messed with each other by hiding their friend’s backpacks. After a gathering earlier this year, one student lost their backpack, not because the Deans collected it, but because the maintenance staff found it outside of the locker room and placed it inside. Bell added that utilizing lockers is also about “caring for the campus, Everyone leaves their backpacks around campus, and optically, we don’t like the look of that either.”
Beyond misplaced backpacks, the Dean’s Office has also faced issues with locker security, which is why students are required to lock their lockers. Bell described incidents of students tampering with unlocked lockers: taking items, switching the locks of two unlocked lockers, and backlocking them.
The Deans have utilized a variety of tactics in order to promote locker use. If a student’s bag is confiscated, in order to have it returned to them, they need to complete a worksheet wherein they essentially write out the locker policy. Previously, Mr. Lamont Quattlebaum, Dean of Students, used to simply take all the bags collected and drop them off at a random spot on campus, leaving students to hunt to find them.
Each student is issued a lock in their freshman year, and they’re required to carry it forward through the rest of their time at SHP. At the start of this school year, in order to motivate students to either bring in their old lock or purchase a new one for five dollars, the Deans’ Office had every locker without a lock on it backlocked. Bell said that, “the biggest reason for doing that is now we don’t have open lockers accessible for folks to just use as dumping grounds.”
Students have been informed by the Dean’s Office of this policy through, as Bell put it, “a lot of information dumped on [them] in the beginning of the year,” as well as several follow up emails containing the expectations for locker usage. Additionally, Faculty were told to not let their students leave backpacks in classrooms during assemblies. Yet, Addy Davis ‘26 recalls asking her teacher if she could leave her backpack in their classroom and being told yes, “so we all leave our backpacks” and “then we come back and it’s gone,” having been taken by the Deans who did a sweep of Homer building classrooms during the Community Life Gathering. Perhaps that is why that figure of 94 backpacks was so high.
Christian Carcione ‘27 also had his backpack taken from his classroom in Homer during a Community Life Gathering, having been told by his teacher “to keep our backpacks” in their room. Carcione even double-checked with his teacher, referring to the email saying that students shouldn’t do that, but was still told it was okay; “And then [the Deans] took our backpacks” and students in his class, including him, received detentions.
While administrators emphasize security and campus appearance, many students feel the policy is unnecessary and overly strict. They additionally reported not using their lockers for a variety of reasons. Isla Heynike ‘26 said, “I don’t use my locker” because it was backlocked by the deans, and she doesn’t feel motivated to get a replacement locker as, “why would I use my money when I could use my friend’s” locker. She said that if it wasn’t backlocked, she “would use it for Community Life Gatherings but not for day to day.” Upon reflecting why others may not utilize their lockers, said “I think they’re either in the same position [as me] where access has been cut off or it takes too much time between classes. Thus the backlocking of lockers has to some extent discouraged locker use, as some students are unwilling to make the extra step to have the backlocked locks removed.
Others, like Poema Ueligitone ‘26, share a similar reluctance to use their lockers. Ueligitone stated, “I forgot the code and I’m too lazy to go to Mr. Medina to ask him the code again.” Carcione reported that using his locker during classes is “inconvenient… since it’s a long walk for me. I’m in the back.” He continued, stating, “I could not tell you a single person that genuinely uses their locker for anything but CLGs.”
Jaiden Ghuman ‘26 touched on a potential consequence of confiscated belongings. In his sophomore year, he left his bag outside next to the lockers; “I come out of assembly and it’s taken. Keep in mind my backpack contains my epipen, which I will die without assuming I eat something I’m allergic to.” While Ghuman was able to regain his epipen upon explaining why he needed his backpack, he still remarked that this is evidence that, “the school did not think this [policy] through.”
Charlie Valim ‘27 said he doesn’t understand the policy, saying it feels like “nitpicking… that doesn’t really help anyone and definitely causes issues within the Sacred Heart student community. I have been told multiple times by teachers that I could just leave my stuff in their room… I just don’t feel like [the policy] solves a problem.” Abby Liu ‘29, on the other hand, reported that she does use her locker on occasion, stating, “I put my volleyball bag in there sometimes” as well as “when I have super heavy folders”—though she noted her peers tend to put their backpacks in the gym and bathrooms.
Overall, Bell noted that “there’s a lot more pushback from the seniors as far as asking” questions like “why do I need to do that?”
While the Deans’ Office sees the locker policy as a necessary step for campus security and order, many students simply view it as an inconvenience that disrupts their routines. Furthermore, it’s debatable whether the efforts made to promote locker usage—such as backlocking unlocked lockers and confiscating backpacks—are actually motivating students to use their lockers, or simply act as a topic for them to complain about. Whether the locker policy fosters security or frustration, one thing is clear: the debate is far from over.
