There’s a new reason to be excited for the school year — students can now use their cell phones during lunch.

Students are allowed to use cell phones during their lunch periods in the following first floor areas: the cafeteria, courtyard, main lobby, lunch hallways and outside the building. If students use their cell phones in other areas or during other times, phones are subject to confiscation.

To ensure that students at lunch aren’t communicating with students in a different lunch period, fifth and sixth period teachers now must take cell phones from students asking to leave the room for various reasons, including going to the bathroom.

The Board of Education implemented the new rules after facing pressure from PTSAs around the county but left it up to individual schools to change the policy this year or next year.

“We decided to go forward with it this year because I like to give Whitman students as much reach as students at other schools,” Goodwin said.

The new cell phone policy is an improvement for students, senior Kevin Cheng said.

“Banning cell phones during lunch doesn’t stop anybody from using them,” he said.

Some teachers said that the new policy acknowledges the fact that students already use phones during lunch.

“This will bring cell phone usage out into the open,” science teacher Sean Reid said. “Especially because during the lunch periods, it was difficult to enforce.”

Hopefully, now that students can text during lunch, they will text less in class, Goodwin said. But as students are increasingly using electronics, texting during lunch was inevitable, he said.

“It was something that was going to happen anyway,” Goodwin said. “Why not start now?”