Lunch Lines: Students, Faculty, and Staff address dining hall issues

Lunch scheduling may undergo some changes.. According to Upper School Principal, Teacher Veda Robinson, the current lunch situation is a “work in progress.” During an interview, she shared her thoughts on the situation, and some helpful facts.

“There are, of course, some growing pains in adjusting to, trying to get people to be in community, and for everyone to be in the dining room, and  recognizing that there are some space issues involved,” Teacher Veda said.

 Teacher Veda shared some helpful workarounds to the current situation as well.

“Now that we have a small number of the green containers available, that should help to alleviate the pressure for those kids who may want to eat outside one day, or ask permission to be able to eat in their room. That should be helpful,”  Teacher Veda said.

The school has already made minor changes to the scheduling of lunch. 

“We’ve already made one change in terms of looking at where we divided the advisee groups because there was a bit of a little imbalance, and so that change has occurred. We’ve actually moved up the list so that it would be a more equal distribution,” Teacher Veda said.

 Teacher Veda also shared her concern for students who might not be eating lunch due to the current schedule “ I am really worried. Some kids are saying, ‘I’m not eating lunch because it’s too loud, it’s too crowded.’ That’s a concern, and we definitely need to deal with that and look at ways we can manage it. I would hope that some of those students would be reaching out to their advisor, or to me, or to (Upper School Dean of Students) Teacher Chris Bielizna for ways that we can be supportive of them,” Teacher Veda said. 

 Since the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year. Many changes to scheduling have been made from the schedule students knew in the previous year. These changes include, the start times of study hall, Meeting for Worship on Wednesdays rather than Thursdays, and, more commonly discussed, lunch.  The lines are much longer at most lunch, meaning students may have to wait longer to get food. The school also introduced a new rule stating that students are not allowed to eat outside of the dining hall.Many students have shared their dissatisfaction with the new system JP Unger ’24, expressed his feelings about the current lunch situation. 

“It’s been very crowded with the whole 15-minute lunch periods, but it’s interesting because there’s all of these kids that show up for first lunch, but I’m sure that not all of them have first lunch. But they still show up and get through and, by the time the second lunch rolls around, it’s a lot less crowded,” Unger said. 

“I think the lunch situation isn’t the best because it’s always super crowded, and it’s hard to find a seat,” said Nico Lippiatt-Cook ’24. “Also, it’s really annoying ,because I have a class (until) 12:45, but they won’t let me have lunch until 1:00, so I have to wait 15 minutes. So it’s kind of frustrating, and I feel like the lunch is kind of short. It’s not really the best, but it feels like it’s hard to complain about it because many students complained about lunch last year and they changed it.”