What’s lunch got to do with it?

After years of havig one lunch, Martin faces the possibility of change for the lunch schedule

Dewey Saracay• Reporter

It’s 12:34. The bell rings and kids flood the halls. Some go off campus, some go to the cafeteria, some flee to a teachers room, and some simply wander the halls. For the kids with nothing to do and nowhere to go, it can be easy for them to find trouble.

In 1996, Martin went to block scheduling and has had one lunch since then. However, due to recent behavior issues, talk of going to multiple lunches has been circulating.

“We talked about going to two or three lunches but we have a seating capacity of 500 in our cafeteria,”

Principal Marlene Roddy said. “We started off our school year with over 3,800 students so we would be serving lunch all day in the cafeteria because with only 500 in there we’d have to have seven or eight lunch periods.”

Ever since we heard the ominous messages through the intercom in the fall, warning of separate lunches if the behavior didn’t change, the thought of multiple lunches has been in the back of our minds.

We have not heard much since then, leaving the student body and faculty wondering what lunch could look like next year.

“Our number of fights has gone significantly down since the start of the year,” Roddy said. “Most of our fights are with the freshmen class. Our junior and senior class rarely has that issue. Sometimes sophomores do, but freshmen tend to be the social group that has the most struggles of learning how to deal with conflict without fighting. They are learning and a lot of them have made a lot of progress so we’re seeing less and less issues with them as well.”

Creating multiple lunches raises many questions about the logistics of the plan. However, it might cause more problems than it would solve.

“I always have someone that asks, ‘Why do you only have one lunch?’” Roddy said. “Well, it works for us and has worked very effectively. Even with discipline, I don’t see how seven lunches would solve discipline issues. It would probably create more with kids cutting class to be with other friends at their weird lunch time. ‘Oh you’re a fourth lunch? Well I’ve got third lunch. I want to see you, let’s just skip both.’”

The social media publicity fights tend to create does not help the attempt to stop them.

“When fights happen, it’s almost always in the cafeteria and I see people running towards them,” freshman Parker Neal said. “I usually don’t walk to it. I wait until someone sends a video of it.”

Though there is about ten seconds of excitement that comes with watching a fight video, most students can see there is no point to it.

“I just don’t get the point of it,” freshman Lexie King said. “Why fight? It doesn’t make sense to me. I feel like they should just stop.”

Roddy said that as of right now there is no plan to change lunch next year. However if that changes, it will most likely affect freshmen as they are the class with the most behavioral issues.

“We had talked about doing a separate lunch for freshmen and it would be a shorter lunch and they would be confined to prob- ably Gym A,” Roddy said.

“But the problem for us, once again, is that we don’t have a viable space for all of them in the cafeteria because that’s our largest class. It’s got over 1,000 students in it but it wouldn’t mean that we wouldn’t consider it. We actually considered it pretty heavily this fall when we were having some serious issues with the freshmen and thought they just can’t manage the freedom and freedom is something you have to manage and take responsibility for.”

The fear of lunch being split will still be in the back of people’s minds for a while. For the current freshmen, they have to hold out hope for the next four years that something drastic won’t happen, taking away the singular lunch for everyone.

“I really hope they don’t take away one lunch which is why I hope there’s no more fighting,” King said. “But I don’t know since these last few months everybody gets riled up. I really hope they don’t do it just because I have a lot of friends and if they split it up, who am I going to eat with if I don’t have a lunch period with any of my friends?”

“One piece of advice I would give to upcoming seniors is to try and be involved in all of the "senior events" because you will regret it if you don't and you'll miss it when it's gone. Everything goes by so fast.”

- senior Dylan Salisbury

“Stay on top of deadlines and keep yourself organized. Keep everything relatively balanced and choose classes that will not drain you out.”

- senior Natalia Flores

“Make sure to enjoy it and do as much as you can and have fun! It's your last year.”

- senior Ahmad Alyousef

When applying to colleges, is there anything you were surprised about?

“I was surprised at how hard it was to stay motivated while I was filling out applications. I kept pushing it off and answered a couple questions at a time rather than sitting down and doing it all at once.”

- senior Natalia Flores

“I was honestly surprised at how easy it was to apply, not a lot of colleges need essays or test scores.”

- senior Ahmad Alyousef

What is something for the class of ‘24 to look out for when choosing their classes and applying to colleges?

“Continue to pick challenging classes so that you are continuing to learn before you go off and take even harder classes. When applying for colleges, apply to several so that you have options.”

- senior Dylan Salisbury

“Prioritize organization. There are a lot of deadlines for different colleges. Everything accumulated gets really overwhelming.”

- senior Natalia Flores

“Try to have some idea of what you would like to study because it makes it easier to make a college decision.”

- senior Ahmad Alyousef

Is there anything you would have done differently when choosing your senior classes?

“When choosing my schedule last year I should have selected science so that I could learn specific things having to do with what I want to study in college.”

- senior Dylan Salisbury

“I have a pretty equal balance of easy electives and more difficult core classes and I would highly recommend it.”

- senior Natalia Flores