The best defense is a good offense, and the newest addition to the faculty fleet epitomizes the term ‘shock and awe’. During lunch or the walk to class, students may have noticed a golf cart sporting the Reynolds black and gold parked in the faculty lot. Mainly funded from alumni donations under the Leslie Fund (created after the hiring of Reynolds principal Leslie Alexander), its acquisition marks a push from school administration to directly combat school truancy.

“[The golf cart] lets us patrol the campus better and have more of a presence in the community to make sure our students are staying on campus,” Assistant Principal Karen Archie said. “When we find students out of class, it helps us mitigate the discipline when it comes to skipping. We can tell them ‘hey, if you go back to school we can talk about working this out’”.

Some Reynolds students are less than enthusiastic about the administration’s hard stance against truants.

“If people skip, that should be their choice,” junior Makayla Douglas said. “They are missing class even more when they get punished for skipping.”

Others feel that students attempting to skip school should be giving a sporting chance.

“Driving in a golf cart is an unfair advantage,” junior Jazlin Smith said.

Besides just deterring skipping, the cart also contains all the amenities of a garbage truck in a slightly smaller package. Armed with a trash grabber and an array of plastic bags, patrolling faculty can help clear Reynolds of litter.

“It makes sure the areas around our school remain clean so they are representative of our campus,” Archie said. “Students are expecting us to patrol the campus, and when we are covering the area not only does the community see us out looking for students that could be skipping, but they also see us out picking up trash.”

All in all, the cart is both intimidating and functional. But just how fast can it go?

“It’s only fourteen miles an hour, but it feels like we’re going a lot faster!” Archie said.

“I could run faster than the cart,” freshman Jonathan Sorto said.

While it certainly has potential, the merit of the vehicle on a high school campus as opposed to the fairway remains contentious. It can help students around the Reynolds and Hanes Park areas get back to class, but those with motor vehicles are more difficult to contain.

“The golf cart isn’t effective because people will still skip. I see them everyday. They have cars so they’ll just drive away,” Douglas said.