Every year at TCS there’s one week where the students can return late books they haven’t turned in by their deadlines, all this without having to pay a fine

The library staff decided to create an amnesty week about five years ago; it was done to encourage students to return the books that the library had borrowed throughout the year. Amnesty week is all about allowing people to return late, checked-out books, without paying the regular fine.

“Our main purpose is to  collect all the books that are checked out, sometimes they forget them at home or forget to return them to the library. When they return the books during the amnesty week, they don’t have to pay the fine for keeping the books more than expected,” Connie Gonzalez, High school librarian of The Columbus School, said.

Many students have been satisfied and encouraged to turn in their books during the amnesty week.

“I think it is really cool that the library understands that many times we forget about turning in the books so during this week, they decided to give us the chance to turn it in without any fine,” Elisa Jaramillo, 9th grader at The Columbus School, said.

The idea behind the amnesty week is that they can recollect the most amount of books possible before the end of the year and this week really has an impact.

“Sometimes the amount of books that are returned comes around 60 or 70 percent of the books that are checked out. If we pass the 50%, that is great for us,” Gonzalez, said.

The purpose of the fine is to shows the students to have responsibility and return what was borrowed to them.

“Students  get really excited to come with the books and not pay any fine, it’s part of the responsibility, that’s why we ask students to pay but even though most of them are very responsible they don’t want to pay so this amnesty week gives them a chance to do both,” González said.