In the midst of the ongoing pandemic, people have learned to adapt to a new normal. Masks are something that can be seen everywhere, people regularly wash their hands and temperature checks have been mandatory in many places. A year after the beginning of the pandemic, restrictions have continued to be lifted, even at school. Something that students no longer have to worry about is checking their temperature as they enter the school building. 

Since the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year, students have become accustomed to needing to get their temperature checked as they walk in every morning. Temperature check stations at multiple places in the school have allowed students to quickly take their temperature and go on to their class. Ever since these stations were implemented at the beginning of the school year, mixed feelings arose between students. 

“I don’t have a strong opinion on temperature checks being removed since a lot of research points to it not actually being a super effective way of detecting people with COVID especially since a lot of students didn’t even use them correctly as well as them possibly not being accurate,” junior Ben Friesen Guhr said. “I also think that if there was any chance of it even preventing a single COVID case, maybe they should have kept it.”

Junior Ethan Sympson is of the opinion that the temperature checks were not very accurate. 

“I don’t really have much of an opinion on the topic,” Sympson said. “I don’t think very much has changed since they have gotten rid of them so I can’t really say much.”

As the school year progressed, some students avoided the temperature check kiosks completely. It started to become very apparent that many students did not even bother getting their temperature checked at all.

“Considering that a large number of students probably didn’t even use the temperature check kiosks correctly, it probably has not made much of an impact to get rid of them,” Friesen Guhr said. 

An issue that many students complained about in the morning as they checked in to the kiosks was the length of the lines and the wait time. The process took time as students needed to make sure that they correctly stood in front of the kiosk so that it could accurately read their temperature. Despite the complaints of many students, Sympson never had an issue with the process. 

“To be honest I don’t really care about getting my temperature checked,” Sympson said. “It didn’t take very long to get your temperature checked in the morning so I can’t really complain about it.”

However, some students never had to worry about long lines as they entered school in the morning. Students with zero hour classes had all the time they needed to get their temperature taken correctly due to the low amount of people entering the building at the time. 

“I come in for a zero hour class so temperature checks don’t bother me at all since I don’t have to wait in a line,” Friesen Guhr said. “So the decision to get rid of them doesn’t really make my day any quicker.”