“I love my job, ” said Margene Sailsbury as she patrolled the front lobby during third period. She comes to Ames High School everyday to make sure students are where they need to be, prevent them from leaving school without an official pass or appropriate ID, and to keep the hallways quiet so students can be absorbed in their studies without interruption. “The people here let me do my job and the students treat me with respect,” Sailsbury said. At a first glance the phrases “hall monitors” and “respect from students” seem a little ill-suited for each other. Fortunately, Sailsbury found a way to make them coincide with one another. “It’s all in the approach,” Sailsbury explained, “I try to be friends with everyone.” The many waves hello and small chats Sailsbury receive throughout the day prove her strategy has worked out nicely. Of course, to every story there are two sides. When students have a constant watchful presence, suspiciously following them down the hallways, many are driven to have different feelings about the hall monitors. Senior Robin Parlade feels that many of the rules enforced by the hall monitors are too severe and cause students excessive inconveniences. “It becomes kind of hard to get to where you need to be when they close the hallways off during lunch,” she said. Senior Natalia Correa agreed with Parlade, adding, “Some of the hall monitors are nice, but others are really unfair.” When confronted with this claim Sailsbury responded saying, “I try not to be unfair, and if I do I’d like someone to come tell me. If there’s a group of guys talking in the front lobby I’d ask them to leave just like if it was a group of girls.” The necessity of having hall monitors is quite apparent. “Believe it or not, some students don’t go to class,” laughed another hall monitor at Ames High School simply known by most students and staff as James. Helping the administration, by getting students to class, and pulling them out when necessary is a big part of a hall monitors job, but not entirely. The hall monitors are also there to ensure students’ safety and keeping parents’ minds at ease. “Parents like the idea of someone being in the halls so people from the outside can’t just come in and walk around,” said James. In the big picture though, how effective are the hall monitors at Ames High School? Is trying to be friends with students the most effective way to keep students in line? James explained his thoughts on this idea while bouncing a rubber ball right inside the doors of the lunchroom. “Like any job, we’re effective — to a point. Could we be more hardcore? Yes. Would that mean we’d be doing our job better? Not necessarily.”