By Keilana Pang
Staff Writer
TCHS implemented the 10-10 rule on Oct. 20, which aims to stop students from leaving in the first and last 10 minutes of class to go to the bathroom. The district wisely approved the safety measure after several crickets, who escaped from the AP Biology classroom onto general campus, mutated and gained a taste for adolescent flesh. Administration created the 10-10 rule to curb the number of students out during cricket activity highs. Although students and staff worried about unforeseen consequences of such a policy, the sentiments dissipated when learning benefits arose.
The crickets developed an acute sense of time and logic in the first week of their escape. Quickly adapting to student behaviors, they synchronized their circadian rhythm to bathroom rush hours—exactly the first and last 10 minutes of class.
“At first, my friends and I were concerned about being unable to go to the bathroom when we needed to,” sophomore Anita Goh said. “But when the cricket swarms started, we realized that the 10-10 rule was made in the interests of our safety.”
When TCUSD implemented the rule, Goh and sophomore Wor E. Ing created a petition to repeal it. They and others argued that the potential complications resulting from long periods without excretion outweigh the concerns surrounding the mutated crickets. However, the calls for basic human sanitation rights fell short next to the multiplying pest population.
“Compared to being eaten alive, not going to the bathroom isn’t a big deal,” Ing said. “Science is advancing quickly anyway, so I’m sure there’ll be readily available bladder surgery when we’re adults.”
Now confined to whole class periods by both the policy and terror of being bitten, students witnessed a rise in productivity and grade averages.
“I think I absorb so much more information by not missing the first few minutes of class,” junior Troy Let said. “Also, I’m pretty sure I remember the lesson better because my senses are heightened by my body’s stress signals from holding bodily waste.”
Fully embracing the 10-10 rule and its mutated cricket prevention, students and staff created competitions to limit their bathroom use. Students who refrain from relieving themselves the longest win; students with the highest grade average win.
“Students used to hone in on their boredom, but now they are alert and fidgety,” AP Environmental Science teacher Leck Chure said. “I love the shift in focus the 10-10 rule created!”