The traumatized freshman came home after her first day of high school.  Her mother asked her what was wrong, and in a small voice, she said, “At lunch, I tried to sit at a table, but an upperclassman told me that ‘freshmen sit on the floor!’ and because there were not enough tables, I had to eat lunch while sitting on the dirty ground.’”

This is obviously an exaggeration, but only slightly.  At YLHS, the fact that there are too few lunch tables is definitely an issue that needs to be dealt with.  Many students are forced to eat their lunch in uncomfortable places, because there simply are not enough tables to go around.

At the base of the 300 building middle staircase during lunch every day, there is a horde of students eating their lunches while sitting on the ground, many of them freshmen.  Now, the YLHS campus is one of the nicest that can be found anywhere in the country, but that does not change the fact that it is an outdoor campus and the ground is inevitably dirty.  Blake Han (10) expresses his distaste in his comment that

“eating lunch on the ground is a disgusting way for students to spend their longest break during the school day.”

In a large campus with plenty of places for extra lunch tables, it is unacceptable that students are forced to eat lunch out of their laps while sitting on the cold, hard ground.  The campus is so spacious that it seems almost silly not to invest in extra lunch tables to easily make many students’ lunchtime experiences more comfortable and enjoyable.

Another issue that stems from the lack of enough lunch tables is the cultivation of cliques and exclusivity.  Because there are not enough lunch tables, it becomes a competition to claim and keep a good lunch table.  It may not be a proven fact, but it is obvious to any observer that those who end up with the nice, shaded lunch tables are almost always the students who are considered more “popular” or “cool” by their peers.  Other students who might have gifts or talents or personalities that are not considered “cool” in today’s culture are more often than not forced to sit on the ground during lunch.  Then, they may think they are less gifted than their classmates sitting at nice tables and become insecure.  This problem can easily be solved by just providing enough tables for everyone to sit at.

Now some may say that there are plenty of places to sit if teachers’ classrooms are included.  Classrooms definitely provide more places to hang out during lunch, but many classrooms are already full as well, and many teachers do not even open their classrooms up during lunch.  Also, unless the students are close to or comfortable around the teacher, eating lunch in a classroom may not be an enjoyable option either.
The lack of enough lunch tables on our campus creates many problems for students during lunchtime.  There seems to be only one viable option, and that is the simplest one: invest in more lunch tables on campus.  Make sure that freshmen do not have to sit on the floor.