By Brian Bergen
Today, I introduced the Practice What We Preach Act. It takes the bell-to-bell cell phone ban New Jersey imposed on 1.3 million public school students and applies it to the people who voted for it.
Under the bill, no member of the Legislature may possess or make non-legislative use of an internet-enabled device from the moment the presiding officer calls the body to order until adjournment of any quorum call, voting session or committee meeting. Secure lockers would be installed outside every chamber entrance and every committee room, locked by security personnel and opened when the gavel comes down. The same way a sophomore gets her phone back at 2:45 p.m.
The consequences are borrowed too
A violation is a disorderly persons offense.
Detention. Offenders sit in their seat for an hour after adjournment “to quietly reflect on the pending business of the State.”
In-Statehouse suspension. Repeat offenders report to Trenton daily without the privilege of speaking on the floor.
“I sit in that room. I have watched members shop, scroll, post and play games while we spend billions of dollars of other people’s money. A kid on a phone in algebra misses a formula. A legislator on a phone during a vote misses a budget.”
I was one of a small number of legislators to vote against the school ban, which took effect at the start of this school year. Meanwhile, New Jersey’s 1989 law making it a disorderly persons offense for a student to carry a beeper on school property is still on the books.
We are still criminalizing beepers. That is the record of the body writing technology policy for your children. Every generation panics about the new thing. Calculators were going to end math. VCRs were going to end reading. Now it’s phones.
Any member who finds this bill insulting, paternalistic and heavy-handed should ask why they voted to do it to somebody else’s kid. There are two honest positions. Vote for this bill, or repeal the one you passed.
What you cannot do is tell a 15-year-old to hand over her phone and then check your fantasy lineup during a roll call.
