By Melissa Hamilton

We’ve all been in the “Monday-morning” situation when it seems impossible that your night’s sleep is over that quickly, when the alarm clock is just too loud, and school is the last thing you have energy for. Sleep deprivation in teenagers is often overlooked, especially in schools like ours where the grade and extra curricular standards are high. We spend so much time dedicated to our futures here where we forget about taking care of ourselves now.

The Westborough High School handbook says that “Students must be in attendance at school by 10:30am if they are tardy, and must not be dismissed before 10:30am in order to be eligible for practice or competition that day”. Think about this. If you go to sleep at midnight, research says you shouldn’t even wake up until 8 am, so you skip first period. And although 7 am may seem like it’s just an hour less to wake up, an hour a day of sleep deprivation adds up to 7 hours by the end of the week- almost an entire night’s sleep. An average high school student has to be in attendance and ready for sports practices (before school and after school), games, clubs, a job at WHS from 7:30-2, a job somewhere else 3-10, PSAT/ SATs, volunteering, studying, and it all becomes too much. If we were supposed to really follow through with what we were told in ninth grade health class- get enough sleep, we’d all be coming in late.

While you’re struggling during break to make up that reading quiz you missed during first period, you’re even further complicated by the “check-in at break” rule. As stated in the WHS Handbook, students who do not see the Assistant Principal at break may be assigned an office detention for ‘failure to report’, even if their tardy is excused. That’s right, in some cases, your choice is following through with an English quiz or a detention. Doesn’t seem fair. Even worse, if you sign in after 7:45 or if you’re late three times, you may be (and probably will be) assigned an office detention, further complicating your busy schedule and giving you even less time to get the sleep you need.

Research shows that kids need eight to ten hours of sleep at night. Drexel University in Philadelphia performed a survey and found that students aged 12 to 18 (which includes us high school students) found that “20 percent of those studied got the recommended eight or more hours of sleep during school nights with the rest (80 percent) getting less than eight hours”.  A similar Rhode Island study found that “85 percent were chronically sleep-deprived and accumulated a minimum 10-hour sleep deficit during the week. Forty percent went to bed after 11 p.m.; 26 percent said they usually got less than 6.5 hours on school nights”. Tired teenagers find it difficult to concentrate- thus disrupting their own learning environment, and making it illogical to be in school in that state of mind in the first place.

I’m not saying we should push back the start time of school. Going to bed around 10 p.m to be ready for the 7 a.m alarm clock isn’t all that bad. But for those of us who have jobs and other priorities after school keeping us up past ten, we should reserve the right to hit the snooze button when we feel we deserve it, without dealing with the repercussions of detentions, or losing the single 10 minute break we get in our 6 and a half hour school day.

The late policy of Westborough High School calls for almost perfect attendance by us students that work tirelessly day and night to keep up with our classes. Three days a quarter is not enough. Late attendance should not be encouraged, but those students that desperately need an hour of sleep more should not be punished. If I can speak for the whole student body, I can say we work tremendously hard for this school, and we should be allowed a more lenient attendance policy. After all, if we’re smart enough to get the grades, we’re smart enough to determine when we deserve to hit the snooze button.