More students eat throughout the school’s hallways
Elena Liao
CONNECTING WITH FRIENDS. A group of ninth-grade students laugh between bits of their lunch in the freshman hallway earlier this year. This is only one of the many groups you can see if you walk through any hallway of the school during the lunch period. It has been increasingly clear that the cafeteria is not always the desired location to eat for many students through all of the grades.
May 15, 2019
Every day from 12:20 to almost 1 p.m. math rooms will fill with students taking tests and history rooms will be crowded with clubs. Even the library will be occupied by crafty students who take bites of their lunch when nobody is looking.
Other students lounge at their lockers, hoping to avoid the cafeteria’s loud, crowded spaces, forcing club-goers to dodge an obstacle course of books and legs along the floor.
The cafeteria is still a hub for lunchtime eating and socializing. Nevertheless, many students spend these 40 minutes elsewhere.
Lots of the empty seats in the cafeteria are because of students attending club meetings. One of these students is freshman Zach Gin, who has a packed lunch schedule each week: Student Council, Science Olympiad, math team and Code@Lab. To him, clubs provide a way to hang out with friends as well as engage in academics.
“They’re a really fun and enjoyable way to spend time with friends during lunch,” Zach said, “and, since I tend to go to academic-based clubs, in the process I can learn something.”
On those days when Zach is done early, he goes to what he calls the “nook at the end of the freshman hallway.”
“Sometimes, in the caf, all the tables are taken by people you don’t really know well, so it’s kinda awkward to just sit there,” Zach said.
Willow Young, a sophomore, spends lunch outside the cafeteria with a group of juniors in the third-floor hallway just off the edge of the western, or “back,” stairway. She said she really likes sitting in that spot.
She said, “It’s really nice when it’s sunny because it makes everything warm.”
But Willow also appreciates the quietness of her lunch location — something the cafeteria lacks.
“As for the cafeteria, I will sit there every once in a while with some friends, and I sat there in the beginning of the year, but it is just too crowded,” Willow said. “I didn’t like it — there are so many people and it gets very loud and hectic.”
During lunch, students can be found swinging their feet in the stairways of Gordon Parks Arts Hall or working together near the third-floor benches or gaming outside the library. One thing is for sure: the cafeteria isn’t the only place to eat.
