Riverdale Implements Heads Up Initiative
Imagine a world without any technology: no devices in your hands, pockets, backpacks, or even your wrist. Twenty years ago, this world may have seemed nothing far from typical; but in 2024, this world has a whole new, unfamiliar meaning to it.
On August 23rd at exactly 3:00 pm EDT, all students, parents, and teachers received an email from Head of Upper School Mr. Mike Velez stating that beginning this school year, all Hill Campus students would be expected to turn their phones off and keep them in their backpacks during the school day. They would call this change in policy the “Heads Up Initiative.” This email undoubtedly came as a shock to many, as it was sent out just a week before the first day of school and introduced what seemed like a completely new high school environment. When asked about what sparked this initiative, Mr. Velez shared that “other schools across the country were rolling out the same program.” For example, according to The New York Times, Georgetown Day School (GDS) in Washington DC announced as soon as the first week of August that it was “time to remove phones from schools.”
For RCS, the process took an immense amount of planning. Mr. Velez stated that in early August, the administration sent out a survey to the parents and faculty “to collect their feedback less around the spirit behind the policy…but wanted to make sure that [they] were rolling out and implementing it in ways that allowed them to really articulate the why behind this shift.” The administration made it clear that they felt really “convictive in [their] decision-making,” which is a large reason why they implemented the policy at full force, as opposed to a gradual rollout.
The motive behind the Heads Up initiative wasn’t solely to encourage more face-to-face interactions and literally keeping the students’ heads up, as the name suggests. In fact, there are many mental health benefits to living phone-free. Dean of the Class of 2026 Mr. Jeremy Clifford discussed the new research regarding the harmful side effects of phone use, stating that “data is becoming more disseminated across a wider audience.” He describes the data as informing schools on the direct link of students’ excessive phone use to greater anxiety, affecting their performances in school and eventually leading to a dip in their grades. Mr. Clifford talked about a recently published book called The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, which he described as providing school administrators with a new perspective on how to deal with the increasing anxiety levels among high school students. The reason? You guessed it: phones. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the presence of phones in schools can “reduce cognitive capacity,” and with the constant distraction of notifications that “disrupt [students’] focus and attention,” there is evidently a “negative association between time spent on smartphones and academic performance.” With the conclusive evidence of scientific research that backs up the obvious harm to students’ cellphone use in schools, the “why” behind this new policy at RCS has become clear.
However, with the research, planning, and rolling-out of the Heads Up initiative behind us, and the policy now in full swing, only one piece of the puzzle remains missing: the opinions from the very students this new policy is targeting. A very ardent ideologue, junior Ben Reich positively expressed that the forced action of putting his phone away “does make life more enjoyable” for him, and believes that from his observations of other RCS students so far this year, no one is “too distraught by the phone policy.” Newly admitted ninth grader Cristina Oh agrees with this claim, stating that while she was “excited to use [her] phone for high school” since her previous middle school prohibited phone use, she ultimately didn’t mind it and it “wasn’t a very big change” for her.
However, the students’ positive outlooks on the new policy were accompanied by constructive criticism and overall uncertainties regarding the phone issue at RCS as a whole. Senior Eric Wallick believes that the phone policy was “an unnecessary fix, as there wasn’t really a phone problem at Riverdale.” He adds that the school could’ve “put more effort towards other changes…that would’ve been more substantial.” In addition, Ben also argued that “there are so many other issues that the school should be taking action towards.”
With schools around the country participating in this phone-ban movement, it only makes sense that RCS would join in. The successes and challenges of RCS’s implementation of the Heads Up initiative proves that no matter how promising or seemingly perfect a new policy may be, any change within a large population, especially within such a critically-thinking student-body at Riverdale, takes time to adjust to. Change takes patience, trial-and-error, but most importantly, the effort of the entire population to make the change a permanent solution. In a public address to the 11th and 12th graders during the first week of school, long-time Spanish teacher and Dean of the Class of 2025 Mr. Johnny Hager emphasized that a “full school buy-in” from both the teachers and the students is vital to the success of the Heads Up initiative. No matter how strict the punishments are, or how much the RCS enforces this policy, it’s up to us, the students, to work with each other to make our own lives better in a phone-free high school experience.
