When Student Government announced its wildly unpopular technology ban for the WCC and Student Center in early May, I was not outraged by the premise — indeed, I am often one of the first to grumble about the negative implications of Lakesiders’ technology use on socialization, as I am sure my position from a previous Tatler issue on Apple AirPods evidenced. Rather, it was a remark featured at the end of the email announcement that drew my ire: “There will be no formal enforcement beyond those around you.” Put simply, if Stud Gov or the administration do not have the willingness or manpower to implement their regulations, those regulations should not exist.

Now, in all fairness, there are a number of possible reasons for Stud Gov’s lack of an enforcement mechanism for the technology ban. For one, who would Stud Gov expect to police the phones? Other teachers? Mandating faculty members to realize student initiatives hardly seems like Stud Gov’s purview.

It ultimately came down, however, to a prevailing spirit of trust at Lakeside. As Stud Gov President Rohan D. ’25, speaking on behalf of the body and its rationale, put it, “[The phone policy] is an expectation in the same way that honestly and earnestly completing assignments is an expectation. Essentially, we place trust in the students to follow the policy rather than needing the teachers to police them.”

The issue is: this doesn’t work. This is self-evident in the technology policy. Almost every day in the cafeteria during the two weeks that the technology ban has been in place, I have noted myriad phones out — just as before — sans repercussions, from students or otherwise. There are, I am sure, Lakesiders (few and far between) who are embracing the new rule, but save for them and the Stud Gov-sponsored posters on the wall, nothing much seems to have changed about the cafeteria and student center.

Even the logic that Stud Gov cites — that of expectations around honesty — is fallacious. The school certainly polices for dishonesty; if not, then why the new apparatus this year to track Google Doc revision history for essays, the modified quiz revision policy for Chemistry classes, or the Spanish V classes’ experiments with Respondus LockDown Browser? When you have over ten JC cases on academic dishonesty in the same year, it necessitates such enforcement measures as the ones mentioned to demonstrate that there really is active application of the rules.

At issue, then, is the fundamental conflict between de jure and de facto administration at Lakeside. In the former, rules exist in the form of expectations, but practically disappear in the latter as a result of their lackluster (if any) application.

Nowhere is this contradiction more glaring than in the case of students going off campus. Every non-senior hears the same thing trumpeted at the beginning of their school year: “only seniors are allowed off campus.” By the second week of school, every non-senior with four wheels and half a brain has broken this standard — so much so that it is a joke at Lakeside. Why is this? They have concluded (rightfully) that despite the de jure prohibition on their exiting campus, the administration does little to maintain this law in practice. In fact, I distinctly remember my sophomore year when four friends rolled into class after having skipped assembly to go off campus, and bragged about how they had come face-to-face with an administrator in the parking lot. “What did he do? Did you get in trouble?” I anxiously asked. My friends all shook their heads, smiling: “He just told us to get to class on time!”

The kicker, though, is that when droves of students cross Parsons to go to Stimson or the AAC everyday without anyone batting an eye, it not only undermines the credibility of rules at Lakeside, but it hurts the minority who actually follow the rules. I, for example, have never skipped an assembly. Before my senior year, I never left campus without a planned absence form. When I admit that to most Lakesiders, they gawk incredulously, as if following the letter of the law is something to be embarrassed about. In some ways, it is.

Obviously I lacked the half a brain required to figure out that I could get off scot-free for leaving campus, and I look back with regret on all the times I declined to go out with my friends or cut a dull assembly simply because I was worried about an imagined threat. By senior year, I realized that I had been punished for good behavior, and the sense of confusion and injustice was undeniable.

Lakeside’s de facto non-enforcement of rules only undermines its authoritative credibility by sowing confusion about what is truly on or off limits, hurting students who are genuinely committed to following the letter of the Community Expectations. That is not to say the only option for the school is to crack down. In the case of leaving campus, for example, I think there are strong arguments for expanding that right to non-Seniors as well, like other schools around Seattle already allow. That is also not to say that Lakeside should not aim to foster a community of mutual trust and support, where students feel just as comfortable holding each other accountable as vesting their faith in one another and themselves, nor that the school should not leave room for forgiveness or the benefit of the doubt.

However, what simply cannot stand next year is Lakeside’s post-modern non-authoritarian spirit of coercion, where it tries to have its cake and eat it too. The school must either stand behind its expectations and rules, or decide to eliminate them altogether.