Opinion: The issue with the lunch-line system
Updated: Oct 5
By Adam Maucieri, David Sorto Funes, Diego Torres Melendrez, Clarion Staff Reporters
The new lunch line system at this school is terrible. Students are just trying to get some lunch after a hard, stressful, first half of the school day, and we have to put up with this idiocy.
The problem stems from only keeping one entrance open. Is it really that hard to have both entrances open? We just want to get inside the cafeteria without getting pushed and shoved by people crowding at the entrance trying to sneak their way in. On top of having to wait 10 minutes to get our lunch, we have to spend another two minutes just trying to exit the cafeteria because the exits are extremely crowded due to the number of students still stuck in line.
Surely this can't be a safe environment. What would happen if there was an emergency in this overpacked cafeteria? All the students would begin to crowd up, someone may get stepped on, lots of people can end up really injured and who's to say someone won't die or break their neck and become paralyzed and end up living an extremely unimaginable miserable life for years to come?
Colin Cowling, a Kennedy senior, said, “I've been at this school for three years and word to my mother this year is the worst the lunch line has ever been, I had no issues with the lunch line in my previous years. Should it really be this hard for me to get a [redacted] Chicken wrap? These past weeks I just decided to not get any lunch to enjoy my break.”
Cowling goes on to explain that the issue surrounding the lunch lines do not stem from the students but instead from the staff and faculties' lousy decisions on this situation.
Another senior at Kennedy, Emilio Cisneros, said, “I'm going to lose my mind having to wait in line trying to get food and waste 2/3 of my lunch break just because of this new system. I could be doing some better stuff like hanging out with my friends or doing classwork.”
Cisneros claims that the lunch line is inconsistent and wastes a lot of our only social interaction time with our friends throughout the day, which is very necessary for social development, especially in the critical growing years.
Finally, we asked one more senior, Jadon Yuke, his thoughts on how these issues could be resolved.
“Honestly we should just go back to what we did last year. We had both doors open and people were getting in and out of lunch in no more than five minutes. The staff may think they are doing something good when in reality they are just creating a huge problem that may come to hurt them later in the future.”
It’s obvious that students are not content with this new system and the solution to make us happy is right in front of the staff's faces. So the staff should take the initiative to revert to our previous systems which would make us all happy.
We also got word from Kennedy Physics teacher Stephen Hill, busy at work, stated: “Um so, yeah, the lunchline I kinda know what you’re talking about ‘cause, um, there are a bunch of people in there at lunch . . . yeah so I think that, um, they need to do something to fix it or something. Also, this apple is 1 newton.”