Sans Controversy

"Our school starts at 9 o'clock, and we would have a lot of students filter in at ten, ten-thirty, quarter to 11; it was a tardiness issue on a grand scale."
Ken Taptuna, counsellor, Kugluktuk High School, Nunavut

Students at Kugluktuk's elementary and high schools march through town

That's an issue that led the Arctic community in Nunavut to begin an experiment. Before the Christmas break the hamlet initiated a policy of emitting a sound-blast from its community siren each day at 8:30 a.m. The siren is attached to the community's fire hall and it's sustained whine similar to that of a Cold-War-era air raid siren is difficult to ignore, much less sleep through. Needless to say, it wakes everyone up, not just recalcitrant students.

"It's activated some time between 10 p.m. and quarter to ten on school nights to notify youth under eighteen that they are to be at home", further clarified Mr. Taptuna. The sound has proven to be an inspiration to the dogs of Kugluktuk; when it sounds off they all take to a concerted barking orchestration.

Northern light legends, Kugluktuk Play

The sun doesn't rise in that northern community until just before noon at this time of year. And the hamlet is immersed once again into darkness by 2 p.m. The one hundred students who attend the high school have traditionally presented it with a massive problem of tardiness and truancy. Normal wake-up efforts have failed, but near-perpetual darkness doesn't aid in influencing youth to arise and rush off to school.

Prevailing temperature is about minus-33-degrees Celsius. Knocking on doors, arranging a buddy system have been attempted, but nothing has made much of a difference. "One of the students mentioned, Why don't you ring the siren in the morning, because that might help us wake up'", explained principal Haydn George.

Now it's up to the school staff and the community to assess just how successful the siren initiative was in the week and a half it was in use, before a decision is made to implement its wake-up sound throughout the school year. If it is judged that the tardiness issue had been successfully addressed, the 8:30 a.m. siren could become a permanent feature in the town.

Whatever works; many townspeople questioned how they felt about the siren expressed the opinion that they didn't mind it. Some said if there is any nuisance value to the regular siren, it is compensated for by helping to move the young people off to school.