The Viper Vibe

Students Suffocating In New Lunch Waves

Monday, November 10, 2003 By Editorial

Ah, lunchtime. What once was a time for a break from the usual routine of work has now become a crowded hot mess. The complaints have piled for just about everything. Name it: the food, the crowds, the heat, the at-points lack of food, and the lack of shady places to sit. It has just become one big hassle, one most teachers and staff avoid by staying in class and/or bringing their own food. Students sometimes follow this example by bringing in food from home and trying to find any haven from the stress of outside, including not even bothering to go to lunch and remaining in class. The most common complaints are often people cutting in line (a listed add-on to the unwritten law of senior and sometime junior privileges) as well as the sweltering heat that most hope will be remedied by winter cold fronts. It also has become more strenuous for cafeteria workers who have to serve so many students as quickly as possible. There is reason for most of the pile-up problems though. The once large shady trees had to be cut down after they were deemed a fire-hazard. And the third lunch wave was cut because students now all came in one single shift. The rush to get food in long lines, sometimes lasting almost the length of lunch, has also become a hassle—a hassle the administration is trying to remedy by the adding of more lunch carts, but students still feel that the changes are insufficient. Why not just bring back third lunch? There is substantial crowding and it would probably relieve a lot of the stress of lunch. Also maybe open-campus should be considered, especially considering that Varela has the largest population in all of Dade-County. But it is well known that there have been numerous amounts of problems and accidents when students try to rush back to class. As a result, when the school opened, having an approximate figure of around 2500 students, having a closed-campus lunch seemed like a reasonable idea, both safe and sufficient to the students needs. It is clear that with the school’s immense population, some solution will eventually have to be made.