Look around. Chances are you will see multiple people using their cell phone, Mp3 player, tablet or other handheld device that has the capability to call, text or access the internet.

Whether it is against the rules or not, students use their cell phones throughout the school day.

Senior Jennifer Shaw said that in general she checks her phone 20 times a day and uses it “mainly when texting or checking email. I don’t ever use it in class unless there is an emergency.

“The most useful feature on my phone could be any one of the following: texting, alarm clock, checking email and calling.”

Dimond’s Assistant Principal of Student Services Holly Morris said the reality is that “there are classes where there are legitimate reasons” to use a cell phone in class.

Shaw said, “I think students should be allowed to use cell phones or other related electronic devices during school hours” with the teacher’s permission, but teachers should outline “their expectations at the start of the school year and semester.”

Morris said she thinks cell phones’ value in the classroom could be worth the hassle because “we are trying to educate students how they are used as a tool.”

Shaw said, “I don’t think cell phones cause too much of a problem in classrooms.

“It is true that some students will use them for cheating, but this is fairly uncommon, or I am terrible at noticing it. The students who text during class are quickly told to turn it off or put it away and they often do,” she said.

Senior Zachary Schwab thinks students “should be allowed to have their phones on them in school. I believe it is okay to have them on, but texting during class and all that, I don’t think that’s okay.

“Using it for math or using it to research, I think that is one thing, but playing games and texting in class, I think that is something teachers need to work more on being stricter about,” he said

Shaw has a different opinion than Schwab.

She believes that if students want to be on their phones in class, ”then let them. It is not the teacher’s obligation to force them to pay attention, and any missed material due to inattention is the student’s fault.”

Schwab thinks cell phones cause a lot of problems, like: “texting and driving, all that.

“Texting and walking is funny, especially when you are watching kids in the hallway texting, and I’ll do that every once in a while, and you see them run into each other,” Schwab said. “I think a lot of accidents actually happen because of it, kids just run into each other. A lot of kids don’t even interact with the kids around them because they are too busy texting.”

Schwab thinks cell phones unplug “us from reality, and we’re all just stuck in a huge virtual reality.”