the.com/hall monitor
Middle management's first draft: all authority, no raise, one bossy sash.
means A student assigned to patrol school hallways and enforce rules like hall passes and quiet, usually with zero actual enforcement power beyond a stern look and a note to the office.
from Straightforward compound of 'hall' (the school corridor) and 'monitor,' from Latin 'monere,' meaning to warn or advise. 'Monitor' had already been used in English schools for centuries to mean an older student given small supervisory duties over others — a tradition stretching back to peer-teaching systems in which senior pupils helped keep order. The hall-specific version is a 20th-century American school fixture, born alongside the modern hallway-and-lockers layout and the need for someone to police the five minutes of chaos between classes.
- origin
- US schools, early 1900s, to free up teachers
- peak power
- a laminated pass and a clipboard
- modern form
- any coworker policing rules they didn't write
- psychology
- rule-following rewarded with more rules to enforce