The start of the school year always snaps students back to reality. While summer is a period of freedom and less structure, once school rolls around, both old and new rules come into place. What many students didn’t expect at the start of the 2025-2026 school year was a new rule that students would have to carry their laptop in its case, outside of their backpack. This was announced on August 25th during the morning announcements and took many students by surprise. 

According to the Archmere Technology department, this rule was enacted after seeing the numerous problems caused by keeping laptops in backpacks. Technology support specialist Mr. McFarland shared the severity of the problem, saying that in just the first month of school they have “had to ship out 14 computers for screen repairs.” This number is alarming because of the short amount of time students have been in school.. 

Despite the facts pointing at a risk from storing laptops in bags, many students have concerns about the practicality of this new rule. When students are not carrying their computer in its case, the student is more likely to leave it behind than if they had just been storing it in your backpack already. Noah Peterson ‘27 expresses his troubles with the new rules, saying “if anything, carrying the laptop out of the bag raises more problems, as it makes it easier to misplace it away from your other things and drop it on the ground.” For many students who have not experienced first hand the damage from carrying their laptop in their backpack, but have dropped things they were carrying, they see more danger in the latter and don’t take the risks as seriously.

In order to enforce this new rule, teachers have been giving points. In theory, this punishment should encourage students to comply. However, with so many students not cooperating, it has become hard to award points to everyone, leading to a lack of fear from students for receiving points. Since this has become a challenge for administrators, Mr. Nowazcyk has begun to work with others to talk about different strategies. One possibility Mr. Nowaczyk mentions is “maybe getting rid of book bags” which means students would have to “use lockers, and carry [their] books.” While this idea may seem extreme, administration suggests it is simply proportionate to the response from students to the new laptop rules.

While the future surrounding this rule is uncertain, currently students are expected to carry their laptops outside of their backpacks. Even though students cannot control whether they get points as a result of disobeying the rule, as Mr. McFarland puts it, you have a choice, do you want to keep their laptop in their backpack and break it and then be without it, or suffer a little bit and have to carry it outside your backpack.”