New lunch rules unfairly take away from freshmen high school experience

Shanell Gordon

A new regulation does not permit freshmen to leave campus during lunch. “My opinion is that we should be able to go outside for lunch because they shouldn’t let what the older students did affect us,” said freshman Deja Starr. Photo: Shanell Gordon

Shanell Gordon, Staff Writer

 

Ninth graders should be able to go outside for lunch. For many students, going out for lunch is an important part of their high school experience. In high school you don’t really get breaks. Not having breaks causes you to get tired of school. When you are a little kid you love school because you get breaks and get to go outside for recess. “Losing the ability to go out means the learning experience is much worse for all freshmen.”

 

When you are in high school, you don’t have recess or breaks so our lunch is our break. Not getting to go out for lunch  causes us to be stuck in the lunchroom eating food we don’t like. “I feel like it is not fair that what the kids from previous years did made us 9th graders not be able to go outside,” said freshmen Laquandice Jones.

 

Staff based the decision on what kids in the past did and made freshman not be able to go outside to get lunch. Freshmen are upset at the fact that this happened. Freshmen Ladeja Starr said “In my opinion, we should be able to go outside for lunch because they shouldn’t let what the older students did affect us.” 

 

“The general response is that they [freshmen]weren’t happy about it,” said principalBrett Stringer. “I totally understand that students think it isn’t fair but my purpose is to make sure that we are creating things so that you guys could be successful.” 

 

Stringer also said “It was harder to get freshmen to class after lunch previously” couldn’t get to class on time the rule could be changed later in the year but we should be given the chance. they change the rules and freshmen are only downstairs in the lunch room then we wouldn’t have a reason to be late. In reality, Stringer didn’t change the rules to make us mad or be mean but he changed it because he wanted freshmen to have a good high school record. 

 

So this means he does know that we don’t like the lunch policy change but he has to put our education before anything so if the lunch is a problem he had to fix it. All he wants from us is to do good in life. Also get good grades so we could pass the ninth grade. Plus he didn’t want students to keep getting marked late and absent for not coming back on time or not returning at all.

 

should be able to go outside is because we need to be able to have multiple choices on our food options. Jones said “We should be able to go outside for lunch because if we don’t want the school lunch,we should be able to eat other foods that we actually like.” 

 

If freshmen don’t like the food in the lunchroom they  could be able to just go to the store on Lake Street. But because freshmen don’t like the food, we will be coming home  later in the day on an empty stomach. Staff always say that school is supposed to prepare you for the real world. In the real world, if we have the money we could go out and get whatever kind  of food we want.

Starr said  that “Last year student didn’t know how to act and come back on time and began being late to their classes.” In response, Stringer changed the lunch policy.

 

 Although this is a good reason it was still not a good change  because it does not give the new kids a chance to do good. Bow we can’t even prove to him that we can do better than the previous student did. So he would never know if we could do better and do the right thing in general. .

Jones said “Us new ninth graders are more mature so we wouldn’t make the same mistakes if we were able to leave school.”

 

The rule may never change back for ninth graders.If we continue to do good the rule should change to allow us out. But, students should understand where the staff were coming from even though some freshmen may disagree.t would be nice to go outside for school lunch but if it affects our learning as much as the staff believe, freshmen have no reason to be mad.