Time is of the essence, deadlines are always coming up, and while a typical school week isn’t a rush to get stuff done, there is always something filling up a student’s schedule. To help with this the school offers a break in the day with lunch periods and study halls. Unfortunately, that time is being cut into by the long lines that plague DGS in the testing center, food stations and ID checks.
Starting where it is most noticeable – lunch lines. Even though there are two entrances to the cafetorium, only one side is used. There are technically two exits but only the one closest to the cafeteria and commons is used because it is the closest, so in the end there are kids going back and forth in the same crowded space.
It is left to the students to create their own order in the chaos, since it’s an absolute mess with no clear dividers for each line. The checkout lines are also right on top of the lunch lines and often overlap making it hard to walk from one side to the other. In short, it is simply a mad rush to get to the cafetorium first to avoid being condemned to wait an eternity to eat.
Students with half of a lunch, whether it be for an extracurricular like choir or a class like Math S, suffer the most from this. In response the school has given these groups a sticker to put on their ID that essentially allows them to skip the lines; however, no clear instructions were given for how to use them. It can be embarrassing to just skip the line because it seems like an selfish act as there is no way to tell who has the sticker and who doesn’t; the confrontations aren’t worth it.
An issue present in the cafetorium and also single-line vendors like The Stable is that not all of the checkout stations are being used. It’s frustrating to have such a long line snaking along the walls and there is the possibility for two or four stations to pay for food but only half are manned.
For a place like The Stable where it is set up for a quick walk-through of food, more checkouts are sorely needed to keep the flow of things.
Along with issues at lunch, there’s a new policy for study halls which requires students to scan their IDs in the west events hallway before being allowed to go into the commons. This is quite annoying for the student experience, but the underlying reasons for why a policy like this is implemented is even more frustrating. The school simply doesn’t trust students to be where they need to be.
Technically students with varsity athletics don’t have a study hall. So, when their season ends they will have to participate in the check-in like everybody else but will be flagged for not having an eighth period study hall.
Finally, it’s not hard to find time to go to the testing center but with the policy of only having one testing center block to finish the retake or makeup, it could be hard to finish the assignment. There is only one person who runs the testing center and they have to handle checking kids in and finding their tests for them. This becomes a problem when a lot of students need to use the center because one person can only move so fast.
