Envision you walk all the way from your locker to your next class just to realize that you forgot the paper you need for that day back in your locker. You know that if you go all the way back to your locker, you will miss a chunk of your lesson. Going back and forth to a locker can be a total waste of time. Can you imagine if you were able to have everything you needed with you at all times? Well, you can if backpacks were allowed back in schools. Backpacks should be allowed back in school for many reasons, including that they would be more convenient for everyone since students would have everything they need at all times, and they would not have to miss the teacher’s lesson over forgetting something so small. 

Backpacks and the idea of if they should be allowed in school has been a debate between schools. Some people and schools believe that they should be allowed and others believe they shouldn’t. When doing research on this topic an article titled “Should Students Be Allowed to Carry Backpacks to School?” which was published by FGear caught my attention. In the article it explained many different reasons why students should be provided the opportunity to carry their backpacks around school. Some of the reasons they provided were that their items are kept more safely and it allows for more organization. One of their most expressed reasons was, “Convenience: It makes it easy to carry things from one place to another as it has separate space for each item like for water bottle, laptop, and keys. Due to this, you don’t have to carry your books or other items in your hand from classroom to classroom. Makes you look neater overall.” The whole concept of backpacks is to provide convenience to their owners. They give students the ability to have what they need whenever they need it with the easiest convenience that is possible. In addition to researching this debate I also interviewed two individuals on their opinion on this topic. I interviewed sophomore Ella Garrett and teacher Miss Osborne. When talking to Ella Garrett she explained to me that at first it was hard for her to transition from having backpacks to not because she needed to figure out when she could as well as when she needed to go to her locker. Ella Garrett believes backpacks have more benefits than not because it allows you to carry everything you need in your bag around the school. My final question to Ella Garrett was whether she believed backpacks should be allowed back in which she responded with, “I say yes because they can help people carry their stuff around the school more easily, making someone not have to stop back at their locker in between classes”. Moreover, when interviewing Miss Osborne, she had more of a mixed opinion on this situation. When I asked her if she believes backpacks are more beneficial for students to carry around all the time she explained, “They are beneficial because Mayfield is a huge building, and I feel like even though students have 5 minutes to get to their next class, it can be all across the building or even to the innovation center, which can be difficult. But also, they are not necessarily more beneficial because they cause a safety issue, which is why they don’t allow it. After all, we don’t search bags or have metal detectors”. Miss Osborne explained to me that she has necessarily never had a problem with backpacks even though one of her freshmen has a type of bag but she is able to see in it and confirm that it is all class work. When it comes to her final opinion she acknowledges that there are both pros and cons to allowing backpacks back in schools. Yet, she believes the cons outweigh the pros due to safety being a top priority for her. She believes safety needs to be the top priority and bringing back pack packs can affect that. She also described to me that it is better to be tardy then jeopardize safety. 

To conclude, both sides of this debate on whether backpacks should be allowed back in school have valid reasons that need to be considered. With all the information that was conducted by the research and the opinion based interviews I believe that backpacks should have the ability to come back but there needs to be high stipulations to prioritize the safety of all the students and staff that are in the building. Keeping safety at an all time high with certain safety requirements while having the ability to have backpacks back in schools would be a game changer for students providing them great benefits.