It’s been one marking period since students returned to Jamesville-DeWitt High School and many have things to say about one particular COVID-19 policy. Many teachers have been encouraging students to wipe off their desks with the provided sanitizing wipes before class starts, but with the wipes always being dried out, this has been a challenge.
One teacher (whose identity shall remain anonymous) said, “It’s like the students are wiping off their desks with a dry and terribly lemon-scented paper towel! What’s a paper towel going to do? It most certainly will not kill germs.”
Teachers aren’t the only ones concerned about the effectiveness of the wipes. Many students are angry about being lied to that the wipes kill “99.9% of germs,” which is near to impossible with the dry wipes. Junior Nate Reeder stated, “Maybe if the wipes actually sanitized, nobody would have germs, and if nobody had germs, nobody would get sick.” Reeder ended his statement with the following message: “I don’t know why we’re still in a pandemic. I just came up with the proper solution.”
And if that wasn’t enough from one student, freshman Kanami LaClair tells our reporter she recalls the wipes in her earth science class being so dry, she used them to blow her nose when the classroom ran out of tissues. The only complaint she had was that she had felt like her nose hairs were being burned off by the horrible lemon scent of the dry wipe. LaClair also told us, “I don’t get evaporation, like why do the wipes just not stay wet? They’d kill so many more germs that way.” While we can not tell you how evaporation works, we most certainly can say that no student should be using the sanitizing wipes to blow their nose. No matter how dry the sanitation wipes are, they are not to be used as tissues and there is no guarantee they will not burn your nose hairs off.
Although the solution has not yet been found to keeping these sanitizing wipes in every classroom damp, this is a lasting issue that must be addressed. Thus proposing a strike, the students and teachers of J-DHS refuse to continue on like this. We can not continue going to school under these circumstances of having dried out sanitation wipes and our noses weeping through our masks from the smell.
