The clock strikes twelve, and you begin to make your way to the atrium as class lets out as any student would, ready to indulge in a fine lunch period of food, downtime, and laughter amongst peers. In turn, you are met with chaos–pure, unfiltered chaos. Students huddle in a dense, crowded line, pining for whatever is served that day.

Fellow Inkwell Leader Charlotte Yanke brought this pressing matter to my attention. “It’s comparable to an amusement park line,” she recounted while we waited to enter the cafeteria one morning. Her comment, though made in humor, holds truth. This new system has the potential to prove problematic down the line. If it appears hectic now, how will it be as the school year progresses?

Upperclassman Sophia Diaz states, “The new lunch system creates an atmosphere of chaos, creating a battlefield of pushing and shoving. It’s unsafe and uncivilized.” Classmate Abby Frazer concurs with Diaz’s statement, providing extra depth as to how this environment may be troubling to students who struggle with the intense atmosphere. “There have been days where I or other people haven’t eaten because it’s been so chaotic and over-simulating that it’s hard to feel comfortable,” she states.

 This problem is due to the scheduled layout, so it does not exist for many underclassmen, who typically attend second lunch. Thus one question prevails: How can this new system become both less hectic, and more fair?

It must be recognized that the new use of the ten-minute gap is not without reason, despite those reasons being largely unknown. What is known is that the lunch schedule concerns the lower-school lunch period. Since this problem spans divisions, its solution will not come without collaboration and time.

In the coming future, the Upper School student body hopes that this scheduling issue will be reformed before it becomes the new norm, providing a civil and more efficient process for entering the lunch room that is both comfortable, equitable, and less stress-inducing.