“It’s not fair!” freshman Chelsea Langston said when told that she, along with her freshman classmates, will not be given Option as a senior.

“If all the seniors before us had Option, then why can’t we?”

She voices a question that many other students in the class of 2010 are also asking.

According to the Board of Education, the decision was made solely to keep students safe. “The whole discussion is based on the issue of safety. Our concern is for teenage lives.” Assistant superintendent Joseph Giancola said.

An anonymous survey was given in 2002 to try and get an idea of what students do when they go out on their lunch option. The survey gave many different situations of what seniors could be doing during option. According to the survey results, only 7.68% of seniors are involved in behaviors deemed risky by the administrators.

“Assuming honesty, most kids just hang out during lunch option,” assistant principal Arden Sommers said.

“Usually I just go to Subway because it’s the only place open fourth period, or I run errands,” senior Kerstin Schultz said.

Over the past few years, a lot of underclassmen without option privileges have been sneaking out of the building during lunch. However, the administrators claim that this and the decision to get rid of option are not connected issues.

But why the class of 2010? Why is this change starting with them? “The idea of starting with the freshmen was no one wanted to take away option from the 10th, 11th, and 12th graders who are used to the idea of having option as a senior,” Giancola said.

Sommers believes that giving option is a special privilege for seniors, but he also worries about safety and trust issues. “It’s a lot easier to control a campus when you know that n o one should be leaving. It’s all about responsibility, trust, and liability,” Sommers said.

Though the issues are separate, principal Roger Sidoti stresses the importance of underclassmen staying at school during the school day, including lunch periods.

“We don’t want to become a school where people can’t come and go,” Sidoti said. “But if you are an underclassman and you step out of the school and you are unauthorized to do that, then you will pay a heavy price.”