“Put that water bottle away, please,” the detention “proctor” says to me as my water bottle is an inch from my mouth. “Food and drink are not allowed in detention.”

I understand that detention is a time for unruly students to think about what they have done wrong, and for students who haven’t done anything wrong to ponder why they’re sitting in the awkwardly quiet detention hall. But here’s what has fazed me: the rule that a student can’t even drink from their water bottle.

It makes sense for there to be a ban on students leaving this study hall. It also makes a lot of sense to ban eating and sleeping, because detention isn’t supposed to be a fun hangout where you can lounge and eat until it’s over.

I was responsible enough to bring my own water bottle in case of the emergency need for a quick break from homework to rehydrate, so why not let me drink from it? I could have been slowly shriveling away to dehydration, but that’s the least of the concerns of the detention hall “baby sitter.”

Anyone who has been in a detention at North knows that their primary concern is that you read from the stack of newspapers, probably scavenged from an academic department’s recycling bin.

So please, someone tell me: Who gives this detention warden the right to take away my rights? As a human being I cannot be denied something as simple as my right as to rehydrate after completing an intense math problem.

Like, that’s #bogus